Rusted Sky

New Orleans / 2005 Hurricane Katrina

Quite literally...

Aaron over at Free Will has a good summation of the problems going on in NOLA. He finishes, before touching on the evacuation of NOLA and Mayor Nagin with this...

"Hindsight is 20/20, and we've never done this before. It's an absolutely unreasonable standard to see every obstacle as some kind of damning "failure". Everyone who gets out of that city alive is a victory. We can learn from this and try to plan better in the future, but it will happen again to another city somewhere in the world, someday and the situation will be just as helpless and desperate then, too. This, folks, is as good as it's going to get. It's an absolutely horrible situation, but that's why it's called a "disaster". It sucks."

The wierd thing is, if anyone had proposed putting mechanisms in place BEFORE something like this happened, they'd likely have been roundly criticized for wasting government money on preparations for an unlikely scenario. For instance, let's look at setting a tent city up for 50,000 people. Find the land, appropriate the land, put in the necessary sanitation and water infrastructure and security structure - and you'd have people screaming at the top of their lungs that this was actually an internment camp that the administration was getting ready to pull a Dachau.

NOLA is a disaster area. You can only do so much preplanning for any particular disaster. Plans for levee breaks? Sure. Plans for hurricanes? Sure. Plans for power outages and pumping station failures? Sure. Plans for breakdowns of civil and civic structures? Sure. Plans for evacuating the city if need be? Sure.

But as a city, you only have a finite amount of resources that you can allocate to preparations for any one disaster. Cover them all, and your resources get stretched mighty thin.

He also posted:

Years ago, when I was in school, I was invited to participate in a think-tank type of workshop at SIU on a similar scenario for Southern Illinois if the New Madrid were to blow and turn this joint into a sandbox. You know what we found? That we were screwed. There was no way to plan ourselves out of the worst-case-scenario. That, as it turned out, was the point of the exercise: To impress upon us that there was no Batman, there was no Superman, and that if the earthquake hit, with hundreds of thousands of people spread out across dozens of devastated towns, it would take days, at a bare minimum, before anyone could reach us, and that we had to take this threat seriously and convey to others the importance of preparing for the disaster, having a bugout kit, being at least moderately prepared for a survival situation. Same rule applies here:

New Orleans is not going to be "saved". It's not possible. It's Atlantis. This is a disaster on an unprecedented scale, the kind of comic-book catastrophe like a major shift in the New Madrid, the La Palma tsunami, the Yellowstone caldera, or a significant meteor shattering over a major city and creating a firestorm that no society has the resources to really "shield" a city from and that no society has the technology to magically "fix" in the aftermath. For all intents and purposes, this may as well have been a nuclear meltdown. Nature is history's greatest monster, and when it decides to go on a killing spree, even the most powerful superpower in human history is simply incapable of fighting back. Nothing within the scope of our imagination can make New Orleans a habitable place right now.

I expect it to get a LOT worse.

J.

In today's bleat he posts:

If anything put me off reading the internets today, it was the two themes of perfidy and nuance. The former being the Bush-is-evil sites that can’t wait for the President to show up at a tent city to do a photo-op in the breadline so they can drag out plastic turkey jokes, and the latter being sites that obsessed over the President’s remarks today. I heard them. I was very underwhelmed. I suppose a bitten lip or a moist eye would have helped to part the waters of Canal St. like the Red Sea, but I don’t expect moving rhetoric from him anymore. I think the White House has a tin ear these days – I heard another speech the other day about how They Hate Our Freedoms, and true though it may be it’s as fresh as a Pink Floyd tune on a classic FM station. I know; impressions are everything, appearances count. But as I get older I care less about the political value of a particular address and more about what actually happens, and I would prefer the 1950s sci-fi movie Authority Figure as the societal default, i.e., someone who bluntly states the facts and says “that’s all, boys” before leaving through a pebbled-glass door to do something, leaving the reporters shouting questions. Sometimes you just tire of spin, the endless carping, the incessant pissy miserabilism, to quote the Pet Shop Boys. It’s as if there’s a superior breed of humanity, uncorrupt and all-knowing, waiting in the wings to solve all our problems if only we’d let them have the reins of power and speak the honeyed words. Listen to them and human failings will be erased, nature turned aside like a man who enters a French restaurant in tennis shoes.

Wait a week, and let’s see what's accomplished by the humans we have, and then we can start throwing javelins.

Well, shit. I won't be wading in that cesspool again soon. One post actually advocated the Red Cross. But most put much more more emphasis on hatred of Bush than anything else. (Like I should really have expected better from Kos?)

And Neal Boortz has an interesting little clip up. Seems a number of his readers have been sending in clips from DU, and he's got two cute ones up.

Here are just a few postings Boortz listeners found on democraticunderground.com. Listen, my friends, to the voices of American Democrats:

BTW, does anyone else think it's suspicious that the levees didn't break until AFTER the hurricane passed and it was clear the storm surge was not going to swamp the city. It would probably only take a couple of sticks of dynamite to get those things flowing. Seems like someone wanted Bush to have another pile of debris to climb on top of.

and...

I didn't think of deliberate destruction of the levee, but that's sure possible. No one was there to see. I HAVE been wondering why Bush looks so perky and happy - like he's very PLEASED about the hurricane. It seems like more than his usual sociopathic cluenessness. Is there something about the oil infrastructure, the neighborhoods that were destroyed (surely not strongholds of GOP support), the probable availability of cheap land now that so much has been destroyed. Or perhaps just that the cost of oil has soared so high? He's a sociopath who is incapable of empathy, yes, but doesn't he seem really, really tickled to you? Like he's gotten something he thought he might not be able to pull off?

There you have it. George Bush may have ordered the flood wall in New Orleans destroyed for some political advantage.

J.

From The Daily Brief: A Military Blog Written With Intelligence And Purpose I've pulled the following image and link. (I put a copy of the image up on my server space, to not snag much of their bandwidth.)

There's a lot of other folks to donate to, of course, but I'm doing a bleg for the Red Cross... and Methodist Relief. 100% of donations go to their work. And if you're looking for a more tangible way to help them, you can get the specs for the kits they distribute and make up your own. (This would be a good Scouting project, I think.)

Want to help? Find a way. Give blood, give time, give money. Want to bitch? Go hang out at Kos and get out of the way.

Technorati tags flood aid and Hurricane Katrina

J.

Katrina Phishing Scams Begin

I had hoped... but no. We saw it in the looting, we're hearing it about the thugs robbing folks who stayed and shooting at military helicopters bringing relief supplies. Yet I believe that for every bad story published, there's a dozen more unnoticed good deeds. Perhaps I'm stupidly optimistic, but if I didn't believe that I'd truely despair....

J.

Maybe there's something to be said for just stacking dirt like crazy to keep water out of a city...

Intricate Flood Protection Long a Focus of Dispute - New York Times

The 17th Street levee that gave way and led to the flooding of New Orleans was part of an intricate, aging system of barriers and pumps that was so chronically underfinanced that senior regional officials of the Army Corps of Engineers complained about it publicly for years.

Often leading the chorus was Alfred C. Naomi, a senior project manager for the corps and a 30-year veteran of efforts to waterproof a city built on slowly sinking mud, surrounded by water and periodically a target of great storms.

...

"A breach under these conditions was ultimately not surprising," he said last night. "I had hoped that we had overdesigned it to a point that it would not fail. But you can overdesign only so much, and then a failure has to come."

No one expected that weak spot to be on a canal that, if anything, had received more attention and shoring up than many other spots in the region. It did not have broad berms, but it did have strong concrete walls.

Shea Penland, director of the Pontchartrain Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of New Orleans, said that was particularly surprising because the break was "along a section that was just upgraded."

"It did not have an earthen levee," Dr. Penland said. "It had a vertical concrete wall several feel thick."

Doesn't much matter now what caused it. They're going to try sealing off the canal, and when it's stabilzed then plugging the hole.

Good luck to them!

J.

A woman posts because she's ashamed of herself.

Democratic Underground - I did not stop to help a * supporter today.

I would have done the same thing except I would have pulled over and asked her if she supported Bush. If she said yeah, then I would have said, "Then I'm only going to offer your baby a ride, not you." And if she refused, I'd tell her that she could call her little hero in the White House for help then. Then I'd speed off, leaving her behind.

Difference being I wouldn't feel any remorse. I'm beyond that. They are hateful people with hateful beliefs, and it would probably be best if the child was taken away and raised by someone else and she was left to fend for herself. In my eyes, Bush and those who still support him are not even Human. They do not deserve sympathy, pity or any other emotion devoted to humans. They aren't Human because they are incapable of feeling sympathy or pity for others.

I hate to say it (I will anyway, of course) but I wonder if the same sort of hatred was put forth by the more intolerant Germans over the Jews in the late 1930s? Look at it - the poster's managed to completely dehumanize someone who's broken down by the side of the road - simply because she had a "W" sticker on her car. (Not the original person who wrote - she was feeling pretty bad about what she did.) You get the feeling that poster would shove this person into a gas chamber, perhaps? Talk about not feeling sympathy or pity.

The thing I dislike about DU is that it panders to the absolute worst in the Democratic party. The most hate-filled, the most illiberal, the least tolerant crowd - and they self-reinforce their feelings like crazy.

Reading through the thread, what's sad is she's figured out for herself what she did wasn't what she was inside... but quite a few folks are telling her she's wrong to feel that way.

i would probably have done the same thing. anything W is soo contaminated!
prior to sonny boy's sitting in the oval office, i'd always give money at the supermarket--money which was earmarked for the salvation army to help feed the poor.

after sonny boy stole the chair at the oval office, a cashier once asked me if i wanted to donate money to help feed the poor... i told him, tell sonny boy to give feed the poor with my tax dollars which he just gave to the rich and unneedy!

and angry too is how i feel about this collecting money from the private sector to help the stranded in NO. why isn't my tax dollar being used for that!?

I generally don't post but this is so striking I was moved to.

Given what's going on in this country today it's inconceivable that you would do this.

How exactly does leaving a woman and small child stranded demonstrate your superiority over anyone?

People are more than their politics. History is replete with tragic examples from the left and right when society forgets that. When we start denying a person in need their humanity because of a bumper sticker we are going down a very ugly road.

Even if you could not 'lower' yourself to actually help them personally, why not call 911 on your cell?

Who benefited from this non-interaction? Not that woman and her child and certainly not you. I hope your example is a cautionary tale for others.

J.

One of the things about being in the military for any length of time is you become aware of just how very important the supply system is. It provides your food, your clothing, ammo, tanks, spare parts, medicine to the hospitals - EVERYTHING goes through Supply. (Please note I'm simplifying for clarity here. Figure if the military needs it, Supply gets it. In the civilian world, retail serves the same function.)

Hand in hand with Supply comes Logistics. A simple definition of Logistics is "getting what you need, where you need it, when you need it, in a condition you can use it". (On the civilian side, you've got FedEx, UPS, DHL, the post office, and a heck of a lot of warehousing and shipping companies - all of which get stuff from the seller to the buyer on every level.)

And it all works pretty darn well. You can get what you need, when you need it. Logistics rules! Um, except when you actually can't get the stuff where it's needed, when it's needed.

What you see in New Orleans is a logistics nightmare. The major methods of transportation were unavailable. Roads? Washed out or flooded. Rail? Same. Air? Airports flooded - no way to land. Helicopters? Can't carry much. Ships? Docks nowhere near where the supplies were needed, and local transportation was unavailable. You literally can't get the stuff there in the quantities needed.

Folks, imagine you're the logistics manager on a disaster response team. You've just been alerted to be ready to respond to a disaster like New Orleans - where basically everything around the city was scrubbed away. Here are some of the questions you'll be asking yourself.

1. How much is going to be needed, and what?

2. Where are the supplies to be used currently warehoused?

3. Where are the supplies going to be needed most?

4. How are you going to get the supplies where they're needed?

5. Where are the disaster response people (most of whom have Real Lives until a disaster hits) going to be coming from, and how long will it take them to get there, organize, and establish a staging area to receive the supplies for initial stockpiling?

6. What transportation systems are operational into the affected area, and how much can they carry per day? (You don't know the conditions yet - you've yet to find out just how screwed you are.)

7. Where are there facilities to store and distribute the supplies INSIDE the disaster area, and how close are they to the areas of greatest need?

8. Do you have vehicles to transport the supplies into the affected area?

9. Are airports in the area operational? Is airlift feasible? (A standard Air Force C-130 can haul about as much as a railway box car - call it 20 tons. But if you don't have anyplace to land it, or airdrop the supplies, you're kind of out of luck. You can get the stuff there fast, but it won't do you much good.)

10. Are the highways passible? How long will it take to clear the highways into the disaster area?

11. Are railways passible? Are there unloading areas that would be suitable and feasible?

(Note - ships are right out. They can transport a heck of a lot at one time, but it takes too long to get the supplies loaded, and if there's no place to unload and distribute stuff from the ships then all you've got is a floating warehouse that might as well be on the other side of the world.)

Then you start your planning - aware that whatever you plan may have to change in moments if conditions change. The questions I've got above are just off the top of my head - figure there's a good fifty or more OTHER problems they had to solve for each question above. And they ALL have to be solved before the first truckload gets to it's destination.

Now, New Orleans is an example of everything going wrong. It'll be a screaming nightmare for logistics planners for decades. You've got a mayor that didn't issue an evac order until prodded hard, who basically didn't follow his own disaster prep plans, a city that had the routes into it destroyed along with a lot of the surrounding area, and was flooded to boot - and it took ONLY four days to get organized, get the supplies procured, delivered and staged, get vehicles and get the roads opened and get large quantities of aid in.

Four days - to move a mountain. There were some damn sharp people working their asses off to make that happen.

It's easy to bitch about how bad and slow the response was. If you aren't familiar with what the logistic response entailed, you can go "If Domino's can get me a pizza in a half hour, why couldn't FEMA get stuff to NO faster?" If you think you could have done better, I strongly urge you to get a degree in logistics management and go to work for FEMA. If you can figure out a way to cut the response time to a worst-case scenario ... something like NO ... by even 10%, you'd be a hero. Unsung, unnoticed except by a handful of your peers, but a hero still.

J.

Google Maps - New Orleans, LA has before and after shots.

J.

Chrenkoff has an interesting post up. One thing that the media isn't tell ing you is that Mississippi got hit WORSE than Louisiana did. Of course, New Orleans gets the attention, primarily because it's so bad and it's got name recognition.

Go. Read.

J.

Like an entire STATE when it comes to disaster relief. To look at the coverage, the ONLY place affected by Katrina was New Orleans. I know, I know, the media just wants to 'help' by pointing out the problems. And now they're tossing the race card on top, trying to ... what? Try to deflect blame from the NOLA mayor and the failed city disaster prep folks? Yet if the media won't acknowledge and detail the scope of the actual problem, how can they effectively suggest remedies?

Captain's Quarters

The media has painted a distorted picture of the disaster almost from the beginning, and certainly after the levees broke on Lake Pontchartrain. The scope of 9/11 was a few city blocks in New York and Washington DC, and if one relied on the Exempt Media coverage for Katrina, the impression it gives is that the scope for Katrina's impact falls mainly on an entire city.

However, vast stretches of Mississippi have been devastated by Katrina, with towns like Biloxi and Gulfport almost completely destroyed. The area of destruction requiring attention comprises the same square mileage as England. Getting resources to all affected points within that zone simultaneously would take an unprecedented, Herculean effort that no one could have anticipated prior to landfall on Monday morning.

As I've detailed before, what we've done in response to Katrina is nothing less than an organizational and logistics miracle. That there's folks who not only won't realize that but go out of their way to denigrate it is pretty darn pathetic.

Update: One of the commetors posts:

"Now then, if the MSM were to look at the outlying areaas....outlying areas the size of Great Britain...they might see a shattered population and infrastructure where neighbor is helping neighbor, where aid is vitally needed, but people are making do until it arrives, where there is no wholesale despair, no wholesale lawlessness, and a place where people picking up the few pieces of their lives that remain, holding on to their Faith, and try to push on through to the next day and the next day...where volunteerism is far more important than politics. These are the things that are deeply held by Mr. Bush.

If I were a cynic, I might actually believe that the MSM's coverage of the New Orleans debacle, and the intense coverage of Democratic officials bemoaning the lack of Fedex overnight instant aid from Bush was an intentional ploy to undermine the present Administration. But they wouldn't do that, would they?

J.

And an F for motivation.

The Australian: Sean Penn's rescue bid sinks [September 05, 2005]

EFFORTS by Hollywood actor Sean Penn to aid New Orleans victims stranded by Hurricane Katrina foundered badly overnight, when the boat he was piloting to launch a rescue attempt sprang a leak.

Penn had planned to rescue children waylaid by Katrina's flood waters, but apparently forgot to plug a hole in the bottom of the vessel, which began taking water within seconds of its launch.

The actor, known for his political activism, was seen wearing what appeared to be a white flak jacket and frantically bailing water out of the sinking vessel with a red plastic cup.

When the boat's motor failed to start, those aboard were forced to use paddles to propel themselves down the flooded New Orleans street. (Points off for failure to check gear before using it. If you take care of your gear, your gear will take care of you.)

Asked what he had hoped to achieve in the waterlogged city, the actor replied: "Whatever I can do to help."

With the boat loaded with members of Penn's entourage, including a personal photographer, one bystander taunted the actor: "How are you going to get any people in that thing?"

Honestly I don't think he's short on cash. He could have been a great spokesman for fund raising in Hollywood - start things off with a million and ask the celebrities out there to chip in the same. I know the Red Cross would have been thrilled to see that.

But I guess a photo op while rescuing little kids is more important.

J.

Or, I agree with him. Doesn't matter - he makes the same points I've tried to, without being, um, delicate about it.

As a former Air Force logistics officer, let me clarify the following for the idiots in the Left Wing Media:

1. Things can get destroyed far more swiftly than they can get fixed.

2. The United States military can wipe out the Taliban and the Iraqi Republican Guard far more swiftly than they can bring 3 million Swanson dinners to an underwater city through an area the size of Great Britain which has no power, no working ports or airports, and a devastated and impassable road network.

J.

American Daughter Media Center - Katrina's Timeline

Katrina's Timeline - from the time it turns towards NOLA, until Thursday night.

It's not pretty, folks. It's all down there, from the forecasts to the newscasts. There was warning. There was time. There just wasn't the will.

People died because the mayor dithered. Not Bush. People died because the mayor tried to wing it, ignoring his disaster plan. Why? Who knows. We do know there was a disaster plan, we do know that school buses were part of it. We know the buses went unused while Nagin called fro Greyhound to send down 500 of them - while he had well over 500 buses to hand sitting unused.

A disaster plan isn't worth the paper it's printed on if it isn't followed. Might as well fold it into paper airplanes and throw them at the hurricane for all the good it'll do.

Update: Damn. This was published on July 25th. Found over at Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: New Orleans's Hurricane Evacuation "Plan"

In storm, N.O. wants no one left behind; Number of people without cars makes evacuation difficult By Bruce Nolan, Staff writer, New Orleans Times-Picayne, July 24, 2005:
City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own. In scripted appearances being recorded now, officials such as Mayor Ray Nagin, local Red Cross Executive Director Kay Wilkins and City Council President Oliver Thomas drive home the word that the city does not have the resources to move out of harm's way an estimated 134,000 people without transportation.

Well, that'd explain why the buses weren't used...

J.

But I followed a link and found the following...

Cold Fury ? Blog Archive ? Tom Ridge’s Duct Tape

You know, it never occurred to any of our leftist friends in the blogosphere or the MSM, that maybe Secretary Ridge went to the trouble of preparing a readiness web site with emergency kit lists, in the public interest. It never occurred to them that it could be anything other than partisan fear mongering.

Well, shame on them. Do you think anybody might have taken Ridge’s pronouncements and urging to be prepared, had his every comment not been met with mockery, allegations of political dirty tricks, and the relentless cry of “duct tape duct tape”?

Matter of fact, here’s some icing on the cake. Here’s a spectacularly ill-informed lefty mocking out DHS for not taking seriously it’s duty to tell people to prepare for disasters. You’re shitting me, right? When a cabinet secretary puts out a 12 page list of simple things to do to prep for disasters, and you spend two years mocking it as a fear mongering, politically motivated directive to buy duct tape, it seems to me you have few grounds to accuse others of having not taken the threats seriously.

You remember the duct tape - but after having laughed at how stupid an idea that was (never mind that duct tape's pretty damn useful, and plastic sheeting can be turned into rain gear, shelter, and water collection and storage devices) did you bother to go to Ready.Gov and look at their suggestions?

Of course not. I didn't either. By happenstance after 9/11 my wife looked at me and asked "Shouldn't we get some fresh water?" (We had two 5 gallon bottles for the disaster that was supposed to befall us on 1/1/2001 or was that 1/1/2000? I forget....) So we did. As far as the rest of the stuff went, we've got camping gear and propane stoves, tents, and about two weeks supply of food. We're not downwind of any urban areas, so the chem, bio and radiological stuff we pretty much ignored. Ready.Gov concentrates on the possibilities of terrorist attack and the destruction and disruption of that sort of attack, of course.

And I'll admit it's a hell of a lot easier to make fun of the folks telling you to prepare for the worst than actually think ahead and PREPARE. But just because it's funny doesn't mean it isn't a good idea.

And that doesn't mean it's all sorts of hard to get stuff. Just take a look.

It's easy to laugh. And none of this would prevent a disaster, of course. But it isn't designed to. It's supposed to buy time.

J.

Magic Marker Strategy - New York Times

I've got the article below the fold in case you don't have a NYTimes login - you can access it if you want. It does bring up some good questions. And the Magic Markers? Cold, but effective - undoubtedly offensive to some. If it comes to a choice between 'sensitive' and ineffective, and 'cold' and effective, I'd say let's go the cold and effective route.

J.

Winds of Change.NET: US Navy Ships and Hurricane Katrina

A hell of a lot. Go take a look.

J.

Right Wing Nut House ? KATRINA: RESPONSE TIMELINE: Politics served up with a smile… And a stilletto.

The following is a timeline that details the response of local, state, and federal authorities to the disaster in New Orleans.

I have not included any information for other areas hit by the storm.
I used one source almost exclusively – the online editions of the New Orleans Times-Picayune (hereinafter referred to as TP). I daresay the paper will receive a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage. (9/6): More sources have been used as they have become available.

I wonder if he's considered a career as a historian?

J.

Spotted this, and I'll admit I'm not too surprised.

BREITBART.COM - Just The News

From all corners of this country, hundreds of would-be rescuers are wending their way to the beleaguered Gulf Coast in buses, vans and trailers. But government red tape has hampered many who ache to help Katrina's victims.

Louisiana's Jefferson Parish is desperate for relief, but parish President Aaron Broussard says officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency turned back three trailer trucks of water, ordered the Coast Guard not to provide emergency diesel fuel and cut emergency power lines. (ed. -- note that the details provided are pretty sparse here. Trying to find more...)

An outraged Broussard said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that the agency needs to bring in all its "force immediately, without red tape, without bureaucracy, act immediately with common sense and leadership, and save lives."

Unfortunately, it looks like FEMA hasn't learned there's a time to dump the red tape, and LEAVE IT ALONE. But on the other hand, having a lot of folks flooding into a disaster area in an uncontrolled/uncoordinated manner isn't a good thing either. It'd be entirely possible for a lot of the aid folks to end up in trouble on their own. So, though this doesn't look too good I'd like to get more details before any judgement is passed.

J.

Posted on my company's web site...

While it is understandable that many of us want to go to the aid of those in need and help with the relief efforts, officials have requested that volunteers stay out of the affected area. Conditions are still unsafe in many locations. Additionally, there is no infrastructure to support volunteers at this point. Roads are out, shelter is scarce, and food/water is unavailable for large groups of volunteers. For those who want to help, the best guidance at this point is to stay out of the area and give money to support coordinated relief efforts already underway. At the point officials identify ways they can use our help, we'll let you know.

J.

A nurse with a little bit of attitude - Hurricane Katrina update #3

Thank God for Nurses.

J.

Gilligan died...

Bob Denver's Gilligan Fan Club

He was 70.

Godspeed... and thank you for all the laughs over the years...

J.

A very good sendup of the media. Caution - definitely adult language which is NSFW - unless you've got headphones or a real liberal work environment.

NEUROTICALLY YOURS CARTOON: HURRICANE REPORT

J.

Of pretty much anything that's 'sensational' in the media.

Salon.com News | A city in ruins

The Army presence is heavy in the Convention Center. Troop transports arrive with busloads of people. They're processed quickly, searched, loaded onto giant helicopters and flown to New Orleans Airport, where buses, planes and trains are now moving in high gear to evacuate the city.

Geraldo Rivera arrives in a Fox News truck. An elderly woman with blond hair grips his elbow. She's wearing thick dark glasses and a pink shirt. He carries her small white dog in his arms. He's wearing thigh-high waders unzipped to below his knees. We shake hands. "Her relative called one of our stations," Geraldo tells me, explaining how that call went to another station, and then another, and finally to him.

The woman had been stranded in her home for six days. Geraldo picked up the woman and her dog and brought them here. The woman looks frail on his arm, though not as bad perhaps as a lady collapsed on a chair nearby, unable to move. Or a woman in a wheelchair being lifted from the truck, carrying her prosthetic leg on her lap.

"That's the second time he brought her here," one of the doctors tells me, nodding toward Geraldo.

"What?"

"They did two takes. Geraldo made that poor woman walk from the Fox News van to the heliport twice. Both times carrying her dog."

"Are you serious?" I ask. He says he is.

The doctor has been here for six days, volunteering for the state.

I know a lot of you somewhat dislike Bush. (And NO is slightly damp at this point...grin) And I realize you're somewhat more politically oriented than I am - but after having watched administrations since Nixon come in with great promises of problem-solving and finding most of them not paying any real attention to actually solving the problems they used to get I'm getting to the point I'm grateful when ANY politician even TRIES to solve problems.
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If someone tries, and fails - would you slam them worse than if they didn't try at all? If all you have to judge success or failure by is media reports, considering that the reporter and cameraman would bypass twenty people who say that things are going well for one person who's hysterical - is it a fair assessment of the success or failure of an operation? Or do you believe that they're offering a balanced view of things?
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I'm a skeptic because I've learned that the media's not interested in presenting what's actually happening. They'll go for the sensational stories. They'll go for the ratings. Tragedy and hysteria gets viewers, viewers=ratings, ratings=revenue. Revenue drives the media industry.
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Now, take a look at the media coverage of the disaster. If you were to judge by the disaster coverage as far as CNN/MSNBC/FOX/ABC are concerned - NOLA's been completely destroyed and it's an ongoing disasterous clusterf*k, and a few trees blew over elsewhere. And the roads and rails were apparently clear right up to two miles outside NO - so what took the relief so damn long?
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My point being, in case it isn't clear, that the entire AREA down there, an area about the size of Great Britain, has been leveled. New Orleans had the reporters, so all we get is what the reporters THERE see fit to report, as they see fit to report it - and their first concern is making sure the viewer comes BACK. You don't get that with good news.
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I'll give props to ZDF for getting out into the sticks and actually trying to cover the REST of the story. (Probably it was because they couldn't shove their way into the media feeding frenzy surrounding New Orleans, he said, cynically..) I really wish that the media would devote 1/5th of their time showing the things that are going RIGHT. I realize it would take away from the impressions they're trying to generate ("How bad is it? Tune in at 11!") but it'd be a welcome relief from the "It's all totally messed up" mantra they're pushing.
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Just my two cents, take it as you will...
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J.

Geraldo making multiple takes of an old lady evacuating. Yeah, that's a big damn help in getting things taken care of, isn't it?

J.

Mommy Sheehan

Heaven knows we could all use a laugh at this point.

J.

There's life in NOLA yet. Lot of rebuilding to do - but she still shines...

.

Some lights are on in the city of New Orleans as shown in this night photo made late Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005. Power is slowly being restored to the area still besieged by flood water. New Orleans officials said Tuesday that they would begin to force people to leave their homes. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

Doesn't look like it was the Evil Rove Racist Death Machine after all. Instead...

American Red Cross

Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?

Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

The Red Cross has been meeting the needs of thousands of New Orleans residents in some 90 shelters throughout the state of Louisiana and elsewhere since before landfall. All told, the Red Cross is today operating 149 shelters for almost 93,000 residents.

The Red Cross shares the nation’s anguish over the worsening situation inside the city. We will continue to work under the direction of the military, state and local authorities and to focus all our efforts on our lifesaving mission of feeding and sheltering.

The Red Cross does not conduct search and rescue operations. We are an organization of civilian volunteers and cannot get relief aid into any location until the local authorities say it is safe and provide us with security and access.

J.

Blockquote>Right Mom - Part IV: OUTCOME AND SUMMARY

We have failed the people of New Orleans. Specifically, we, as a society, have failed the poor underclass of New Orleans.

They have done exactly what they were supposed to do, as taught to them for the past 40-50 years.

They have waited in the proper line that they were supposed to, depending on their life’s stage (birth/death/desire to move, etc.).

They have been where they were supposed to do be. Doing what they were supposed to do.

Do you realize that most of these people have never been beyond 20-30 miles from their point of birth? They didn’t travel all over, not even around the state or region. They stayed almost exactly where they grew up. Why should they have gone further away when everything was taken care of for them?

But, by putting them into a system that punishes “free thinkers” and industriousness, we robbed them of the ability to take care of themselves and their family.

We, as a society, conditioned them to not take initiative to save themselves and their family. Interesting premise there. If you tell someone that they're helpless, that everyone else will take care of them, should it be a surprise that when they have to take care of themselves it's not exactly something they're good at?

J.

Everything looks like a nail.

Alenda Lux

I'm not sure what it is with Washington that they believe there isn't a problem that they can't throw a lawyer at to solve. This was proven with the 9-11 Commission when, in an attempt to find out what went wrong with our intelligence organizations, we were given a panel of lawyers with absolutely no background in either intelligence or organizational theory. Indeed, the results show the disconnect that is bound to occur when you put people in charge of running organizations dealing with issues in which they have no relevant experience.

Michael Brown has also proven this at FEMA, and I think Michael Chertoff has as well at Homeland Security, though not as blatantly as Brown. But I don't think, even with the best leadership, that FEMA could pull off an adequate recovery effort without some semblance of local leadership, which was sorely lacking in New Orleans. Nevertheless, we need to fix FEMA.

And for God's sake, limit lawyer involvement. They're looking for who's at fault - NOT how best to create a working system. Or, as Tom Paxton put it:

One Million Lawyers
Humankind has survived some disasters, I'm sure.
Like locusts and flash floods and flu.
There's never a moment when we've been secure
From the ills that the flesh is heir to.
If it isn't a war, it's some gruesome disease.
If it isn't disease, then it's war.
But there's worse still to come, and I'm asking you please
How the world's gonna take any more?

(CHORUS:)

In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers,
One million lawyers, one million lawyers.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?

The world shook with dread of Atilla the Hun
As he conquered with fire and steel,
And Genghis and Kubla and all of the Kahns
Ground a groaning world under the heel.
Disaster, disaster, so what else is new?
We've suffered the worst and then some.
So I'm sorry to tell you, my suffering friends,
Of the terrible scourge still to come.

(CHORUS)

(BREAK:)

Oh, a suffering world cries for mercy
As far as the eye can see.
Lawyers around every bend in the road,
Laywers in every tree,
Lawyers in restaurants, lawyers in clubs,
Lawyers behind every door,
Behind windows and potted plants, shade trees and shrubs,
Lawyers on pogo sticks, lawyers in politics!

(CHORUS)

In spring there's tornadoes and rampaging floods,
In summer it's heat stroke and draught.
There's Ivy League football to ruin the fall,
It's a terrible scourge, without doubt.
There are blizzards to batter the shivering plain.
There are dust storms that strike, but far worse
Is the threat of disaster to shrivel the brain,
It's the threat of implacable curse.

In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers,
One million lawyers, one million lawyers.
In ten years we're gonna have one million lawyers.
How much can a poor nation stand?
How much can a poor nation stand?

J.

I've been watching for this for a while. It's about a year or two overdue. Apparently there were some licensing disputes and manufacturing problems... but now it's on the market.

Gomo Gear - Virtual Keyboardl

I-Tech Dynamic's virtual keyboard and Bluetooth virtual keyboard began shipping on Monday August 29 and is currently in stock

The Virtual Keyboard is an innovative input device for PDAs, PCs, Laptops and Smart Phones that projects a full-sized virtual keyboard on to any flat surface for rapid text-entry and navigation. Compatible with O2 XDA I, O2 XDA II, Orange SPV e200, Palm Tungsten T3, QTek 8080 Smartphone, Palm m505, HP2210, HP3417, HP rx3715 (Use HP 5550 Driver), HP 3800/3900 Series (Use HP 5455 Driver), HP4150, HP5455, HP5550, Laptops / Desktops running Win XP/2000/NT/98 via serial connector, or optional USB adapter. Includes a leather case, connection cables for compatible devices, power adapter, quick start guide & drivers.

You know, I just thought of the perfect place for these.

Schools.

I spent three years in the DeKalb County school system. What a bored teen-ager can do to a mechanical keyboard is darn near a crime. I have no count of how many keys I had to rearrange, how many springs I had to replace, how many keyboards weren't salvageable.

These might be a bit expensive, but they're cheaper than a service call...

Hmmm. Stock's cheap, too, for IBZT.PK...

Hmmm.

Yeah, it's speculative. But on the other hand, a hundred bucks worth of stock might be worth something down the road....

J.

Finally, analysis instead of woulda, coulda, shoulda frothing.

Political Issues Snarled Plans for Troop Aid - New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 - As New Orleans descended into chaos last week and Louisiana's governor asked for 40,000 soldiers, President Bush's senior advisers debated whether the president should speed the arrival of active-duty troops by seizing control of the hurricane relief mission from the governor.

For reasons of practicality and politics, officials at the Justice Department and Pentagon, and then at the White House, decided not to urge Mr. Bush to take command of the effort.

Instead, the Washington officials decided to rely on the growing number of National Guard personnel flowing into Louisiana, who were under Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco's control. The debate was triggered as officials began to realize that Hurricane Katrina exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration's senior homeland security officials, the hurricane showed the failure of their plan to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated and unable to act quickly until reinforcements arrive on the scene.

As criticism of the response to Hurricane Katrina has mounted, one of the most pointed questions has been why more troops were not available more quickly to restore order and offer aid. Interviews with officials in Washington and Louisiana show that as the situation grew worse, they were wrangling with questions of federal/state authority, weighing the realities of military logistics and perhaps talking past each other in the crisis.

To seize control of the mission, Mr. Bush would have had to invoke the Insurrection Act, which allows the president in times of unrest to command active-duty forces into the states to perform law enforcement duties. But decision makers in Washington felt certain that Governor Blanco would have resisted surrendering control of the military relief mission as Bush Administration officials believe would have been required to deploy active-duty combat forces before law and order had been re-established. While troops can conduct relief missions without the legal authority of the Insurrection Act, Pentagon and military officials say that no active-duty forces could have been sent into the chaos of New Orleans on Wednesday or Thursday without confronting law-and-order challenges.

But just as important to the administration were worries about the message that would have been sent by a president ousting a Southern governor of another party from command of her National Guard, according to administration, Pentagon and Justice Department officials.

"Can you imagine how it would have been perceived if a president of the United States of one party had pre-emptively taken from the female governor of another party the command and control of her forces, unless the security situation made it completely clear that she was unable to effectively execute her command authority and that lawlessness was the inevitable result?" asked one senior administration official, who spoke anonymously because the talks were confidential.

Officials in Louisiana agree that the governor would not have given up control over National Guard troops in her state as would have been required to send large numbers of active-duty soldiers into the area. But they also say they were desperate and would have welcomed assistance by active-duty soldiers.

"I need everything you have got," Governor Blanco said she told Mr. Bush last Tuesday, when New Orleans flooded. In an interview, she acknowledged that she did not specify what sorts of soldiers. "Nobody told me that I had to request that. I thought that I had requested everything they had," she said. "We were living in a war zone by then."

The governor illustrated her stance when, overnight Friday, she rejected a more modest proposal for a hybrid command structure in which both the Guard and active-duty troops would be under the command of an active-duty, three-star general - but only after he had been sworn into the Louisiana Guard.

Also at issue was whether active-duty troops could respond faster and in larger numbers than National Guard soldiers.

By last Wednesday, Pentagon officials said even the 82nd Airborne, which has a brigade on standby to move out within 18 hours - could not arrive any faster than 7,000 National Guard troops, which are specially trained and equipped for civilian law enforcement duties. In the end, the flow of thousands of National Guard soldiers, especially military police, was accelerated from other states.

There's also an interesting proposal for a sort of Responder Corps which could backfill in case of an 'ultra-catastrophe', which kills all the first responders for miles around. (Well, in that case, there's not likely to be much left to worry about as far as people to rescue... sorry, just cynical. But for lesser catastrophies, I think it's not a bad idea.)

Read the whole thing. Like I said, I think it's a good analysis - without the heavy-duty screaming and fingerpointing that seems prevalent in other accounts....

J.

It's been ahell of a week.

BREITBART.COM - Just The News

Authorities said Friday that their first systematic sweep of the city found far fewer bodies than expected, suggesting that Hurricane Katrina's death toll may not be the catastrophic 10,000 feared.

"I think there's some encouragement in what we've found in the initial sweeps that some of the catastrophic deaths that some people predicted may not have occurred," said Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security chief.

Atom Chip Corporation has some interesting products. Unless, of course, they're vaporware.

Wouldn't you want a 1TB IDE drive? How about a 2TB drive?

Maybe a wireless super notebook with the following specs?

Specification:1TB QuantumOptical Non-Volatile RAM /6.8GHz CPU, AtomChip® Quantum® II processor /2TB Quantum Storage[ATA-IDE] /12.1" WXGA 1280x800,6:10 TFT Glare Type LCD display with 1.3 Mega pixel camera /802.11a/802.11b/802.11g WLAN /Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100/2200BG/2915ABG network connection /WiFi,Bluetoth,GPRS-with Bluetoth antena /USB2.0x3 /Optical Drive: DVD Super Multi /LAN port, SVGA-out port, PCMCIA slot, 1394A port /Modem port /Interface Ports Front Side:4 in 1 Card reader[SDIO,SD,MS Pro,MS] /BOSE Headphone Music System with noise Cancelling /Buit-in two stereo speakers /Microphone /Application Launch Key:E-mail,Internet, Capture,WLAN /Pointer: Synaptics touchpad with 4 way scrolling button /Windows XP-Professional and Linux/ Voice Command /Li-Ion battery /AC Adapter/ Dimensions: 320(W)x242(D)x22(H)mm/28mm(front/back /Weight around 1900g.

I'm impressed. Unless, of course, it's all vaporware. (Like we haven't seen a lot of THAT over the years...)

J.

The density of information of this memory is 128MB/square millimeter having the thickness of the recording media(array) of 20microns. 3.2GB of non-volatile RAM are contained in one cubic millimeter. Also, this new Quantum–Optical technology allows to build up to 256GB in one package / or module up to 35TB.

It almost looks like some are advocating ANOTHER layer of bureacracy in our disaster response systems.

Yeah, like that'll help.

It's been my experience that at some point you've got to stop adding layer upon layer upon layer of oversight, and actually pay attention to the folks on the ground doing the work. Adding extra layers of people who are nominally in control and able to push them every which way won't do much except cause a great deal of confusion when it comes to figuring out who should be able to decide what - and who should be RESPONSIBLE for what.

A long time ago the military figured out that trying to run things by committee wasn't a good idea. You don't see comittees at the squadron, wing, or group levels - you have squadron commanders, wing commanders, and group commanders. Each level gets its orders from the next higher level, which allocates resources according to what's available and appropriate. (Which is why you'll rarely see the 90th Avionics Maintenance Squadron being used for engine repair at the 90th Logistics Group motor pool, or the 33rd Water Purification Squadron being used to fix electric lines.) You won't see (except in EXTREMELY unusual circumstances) a shortcutting of the chain of command. That just isn't effective, and leads to confusion.

Now the critics of the response say things should have been different, that the procedures and command structures should have been bypassed. Well, maybe yes and maybe no. The structures are there for a reason - you don't just arbitrarily toss them to one side because you think the people in the positions of command are incompetent. But then you get into a stickier situation - what criteria do you use to decide the competency? Media reports? Timeline checklists? Senatorial dictates?

We need to examine the problem carefully, and make sure there's a real, measurable deficiency AND identify some real ways to fix it before we start slicing off chunks from the systems we have now. Otherwise, if a storm like Katrina hits while we're in the middle of a gut&replace, we'll be SOL.

J.

Captain's Quarters

The designers of the Flight 93 memorial at the impact site unveiled their effort yesterday.

If you're going for symbolism, how about a 300 foot white spire inclined about 30 degreees off vertical? Or maybe a big circle with a large X bisecting it?

Sorry - this just doesn't cut it for me. Guess I'll never be much of an artist, but I can sure tell what looks right and what doesn't quite look appropriate.

J.

The 12v halogen under-cabinet lighting we've got in the kitchen's getting a bit fragile. The fixtures, due to heat and UV, are getting brittle, and we've been having lenses and bezels fall off. But we like the underlight, it's dimmable and makes the kitchen very pleasant at night - also it was one of the things that sold us on the kitchen, which sold us on the house.

Oddly enough, they don't make the 12v style fixtures any more. I'd gotten some as spares - but we've been talking about putting in tile backsplashes above the counters and now would probably be best to swap the 12v systems for 120v systems. So last weekend I started on the easiest of the jobs, and promptly ran into snags that required the dishwasher be moved out and a lot of holes cut in the cabinet walls. Whoever installed the 12V systems didn't think they'd ever need replacing, apparently. They've put junction blocks behind drywall, ran cords through holes just barely large enough to accept the cord (much less any replacement ones) and overall it's been a lot more fun to swap out 8 lights so far than I would have thought. (And yes, I did try the trick of using string to snake the wires through - but the folks who did this (as I said) had minimal clearances on all turns and holes.) I wish I could use the 12v wiring for 120v, but we're pretty attached to this house and would hate to have it burn down. I just don't trust the wiring to take the extra voltage.So I've been cramming myself into cabinets trying to get wire pulled through the walls, swearing at the folks who installed this stuff, and leaving sufficient slack and large enough access holes so the NEXT swapout will just be annoying, not miserable.

Gotten 8 swapped out so far... only 10 remaining. But those will be the fun ones. 6 terminate in two transformers, which are at the back of a 6" wide cookie sheet cabinet by the side of the stove. I'll have to pull the stove out for those, I think. Well, next weekend will be soon enough to worry about them...

J.

9/11

Planes hitting.
People Jumping.

The beginning of the end.

J.

What causes some folks to prefer wild-ass theories to facts?

With 9/11, there's a whole raft of theories to float your boat on. It was really caused by the Jews. It was really caused by Bush to justify a war against Iraq. There weren't any people on the planes in the first place. The Pentagon was hit by a truck bomb. It was hit by a missile fired from a Navy ship. The firemen in the WTC were really planting explosives. Flight 93 was really brought down by an F-16. The list goes on and on and on. You can get DVDs with all the popular theories, each more fantastic than the next, each requiring the laws of physics and metallurgy and materials science be ignored or (at best) bent to the point of fracture.

Why do folks believe this shit? Why are they willing to accept as gospel theories that not only can't be proven, but sound bizzare?

My father is/was a long-time listener to Art Bell's show, and believed that the Comet Hale-Bopp was indeed being shadowed by a UFO. Well, we know how that turned out. You want to talk about weird stuff - that's the place...

What is it that tickles the fancy so that someone normally rational and very reality-based (I'm not using this in the political sense - It's my thinking that folks who say that their politics are 'reality-based' inhabit a very different reality than the one I'm using - but rather the psychological sense in that they can tell right from wrong, figure out proper conclusions from sufficient facts and are willing to modify their opinions based on verifiable information...) to the point where they latch onto an idea and aren't willing to examine it rationally?

My father was into the paranormal/UFO stuff for a very long time. Even as late as Hale-Bopp he was thinking we were continually being visited. We haven't talked about it for a while now, but I think the Heaven's Gate suicides really made him reconsider the whole thing. But after that, he started paying a lot of attention to his junk mail. (This wasn't an improvement, BTW. Send off 10 bucks to a snail-mail scammer, and you'll be on a dozen more mailing lists in a month.) And his gullibiity's been sorely used.

In the case of something like 9/11, there's plenty of ridiculous claims, and plenty of sites debunking them. My favorite article on the whole thing was at Popular Mechanics, in their article Debunking the 9/11 Myths

Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced we know the truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase "World Trade Center conspiracy" and you'll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.

Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.

In a way, it's a lot like troubleshooting a problem with a computer. You don't go in with a pre-selected result in mind - you look at the problems, form a theory about the problem and how to fix it, and then test the theory (and the fix) to see if it does the job. If it does, you're in good shape. If not, you get to start over. Occam's razor doesn't necessarily apply when dealing with Windows problems - but in the real world it's surprising how often it's useful.

In the case of 9/11, which is the simpler theory? That 20 hijackers comandeered 4 planes? Or there was a massive conspiracy with remote controlled aircraft/missiles, and the planes never existed in the first place? (We won't even go into the large numbers of folks who'd be needed for a massive conspiracy like this, and how they could (a) disappear without even being missed, or (b) keep the secret so well that all there is to go on are unsubstantiated fantasies of an omnipotent government deliberately murdering it's own people to provoke a war.

Don't know about you - but I'll take the simpler explanation where it fits with the known facts...

J.

Memorable Quotes from Serenity (2005)

I'll admit I had a hard time keeping from laughing at them.

Apparently, this is the first of three movies. This might spark a revival of decent quality, funny, innovative SF to the theaters. Or at least funny... admittedly decent and innovative SF's in pretty short supply in the Hollywood warehouses these days..

J.

Looks like, according to Jane Galt. A lot of this is simply common sense - as in "If you do these things you'll be better off".

Asymmetrical Information: The poor really are different

The poor really are different
The post below is complicated, for some conservatives, by the fact that if the poor acted like the middle class, they wouldn't have problems like no credit or savings.
If poor people did just four things, the poverty rate would be a fraction of what it currently is. Those four things are:
1) Finish high school
2) Get married before having children
3) Have no more than two children
4) Work full time
These are things that 99% of middle class people take as due course. In addition, there's some pretty good evidence that many people who are poor have personality problems that substantially contribute to their poverty.

For example, people with a GED do not experience significant earnings improvement over people who have not graduated from high school. In this credential-mad world, this simply should not be. And it is true even though people with a GED are apparently substantially more intelligent than people without a GED.

How can this be? Even if the GED were totally worthless, available evidence seems to indicate that intelligence carries a premium in the labour market.

The best explanation seems to be that people with a GED (as a group) are smart people with poor impulse control. What intelligence giveth, a tendency to make bad decisions taketh away.

In other words, middle class culture is such that bad long-term decision making also has painful short-term consequences. This does not, obviously, stop many middle class people from becoming addicted to drugs, flagrantly screwing up at work, having children they can't take care of, and so forth. But on the margin, it prevents a lot of people from taking steps that might lead to bankruptcy and deprivation. We like to think that it's just us being the intrinsically worthy humans that we are, but honestly, how many of my nice middle class readers had the courage to drop out of high school and steal cars for a living?

I'm not really kidding. I mean, I don't know about the rest of you, but when I was eighteen, if my peer group had taken up swallowing razor blades I would have been happily killed myself trying to set a world record. And if they had thought school was for losers and the cool thing to do was to hang out all day listening to music and running dime bags for the local narcotics emporium, I would have been right there with them. Lucky for me, my peer group thought that the most important thing in the entire world was to get an ivy league diploma, so I went to Penn and ended up shilling for drug companies on my blog.

Maybe you were different. But think back to the times--and you know there were times--when trying to win the approval of your peers convinced you to do things that were stupid, wrong, or both. Remember what it felt like to be sixteen and skinny and maybe not as charming and self confident as others around you, and ask yourself if you'd really be able to withstand their derision in order to go to college--especially if you didn't even know anyone who'd ever been to college, or have any but the haziest idea of what one might do when one got out. Try to imagine deciding to get a BA when doing so means cutting yourself off from the only world you know and launching yourself into a scary new place where everyone's wealthier, better educated, and more assured than you are.

Or take a minute right now and try to imagine how your friends would react if you announced that you'd decided to quit work, have a baby, and go on welfare. They'd make you feel like an outsider, wouldn't they? And isn't that at least part of the reason that you don't step outside of any of the behavioural boundaries that the middle class has set for itself?

Bad peer groups, like good ones, create their own equilibrium. Doing things that prevent you from attaining material success outside the group can become an important sign off loyalty to the group, which of course just makes it harder to break out of a group, even if it is destined for prison and/or poverty. I think it is fine, even necessary, to recognize that these groups have value systems which make it very difficult for individual members to get a foothold on the economic ladder. But I think conservatives need to be a lot more humble about how easily they would break out of such groups if that is where they had happened to be born.

And I didn't bring much to the marriage at all, aside from a near minimum-wage job, a lot of junk, and a willingness to listen to her ideas - because I could tell my own on money handling didn't work that well.

Sometimes, marrying someone with the qualities you lack is the best way to go...

J.

The Flying Spaghetti Monster sees all : CafePress.com

Now, the little guy goes to a Methodist school. Wonder what the response would be if I put a Pastafarianism sticker on my back window?

Don't forget to check out www.venganza.org - who knows? It just MIGHT be true!

J.

There's a lot we don't know about the heavens yet - though we're getting a decent handle on things there could still be the occasional golden BB just waiting to strike...

Free Will: Daily libertarian conservative news and commentary!

Mrs. O'Leary's Comet

Speaking of disasters, here's a theory about the Chicago Fire that I've never heard before:

First sighted in 1772, the comet was named for Wilhelm von Biela, who calculated its orbit around the sun in 1826 and discovered that it returned at regular intervals of 6.6 years. During the comet's 1846 pass, astronomers noted that it had broken into two large pieces. The position of the fragments was recorded during subsequent orbits, until the comet failed to appear in 1866.

The comet was never seen again but, in early 1872, when it was scheduled to return, a meteor shower radiated from the part of the sky where it would have appeared. Meteor showers of diminishing intensity continued at regular intervals for the remainder of the 19th century, leading astronomers to believe that the meteors marked the death of Biela's Comet.

Based on his analysis of the positions of the fragments during the comet's final passes, Wood now concludes that the comet broke into pieces after a close encounter with Jupiter’s asteroid belt in 1845. He also thinks that Jupiter's gravity affected the trajectory and speed of the fragments again during the comet's penultimate orbit, sending the smaller of the two fragments on a path toward Earth.

Wood theorizes that the main body of the fragment crashed into one of the Great Lakes on October 7, 1871, and that peripheral fragments and debris, including small pieces of frozen methane, acetylene, and other highly combustible chemicals, exploded from the friction of entering the Earth's atmosphere and ignited the Chicago fire and dozens of other fires that burned simultaneously in Wisconsin and Michigan.

Eye-witness reports large area affected at the time, in approximately the shape one would expect from a meteor impact and subsequent fall of ejeecta. Spontaneous, simultaneous ignitions - lack of smoke - 'great balls of fire'. Meteoric remains found, huge impact crater found underwater in Lake Huron...

Other information on this can be found on the thread here... and apparently a firefighter was lecturing on it here. His thought...

The simple fact we must conclude here is that there has not been one credible report of a meteorite starting a fire. When we consider all the evidence we can state that meteorites pose virtually no threat of being an ignition source. If a large enough object gets through the atmosphere and strikes the Earth with enough force to cause a fire then that fire would probably be a small part of the problem. It is probably safe to assume that the only way an object falling from outer space could have caused the Great Chicago Fire was if it had frightened Mrs. OLeary’s cow into kicking over the fabled lantern.

J.

But GLBTQA was a new one on me. You know, I don't think I'd make it through college if I had to go through courses like this. I went through the early Race Relations courses in the AF, don't much care what anyone's sexual orientation is - but all this seems a lot less like understanding it and letting it be background than obsessing about it and constantly having it color everything anyone does. And it worries me when something like this becomes more important than (seemingly) actually making sure the students learn anything. Acceptance, apparently, isn't sufficient.

I've included the last line in the article - the rest is a bit of a jawdropper and I recommend it.

FrontPage magazine.com :: Academic Brainwashing: A Resident Assistant's Tale by Athena Kerry

...

And, for a broke college student, free room and board plus a stipend makes it impractical not to sell out our values.

FrontPage magazine.com :: How Faculty Radicals Made Me a Paleo-Conservative by Kevin Carter

I only distribute Sam Francis and Steve Sailer to those I can trust. Even so, the ranks, though invisible, are growing. While I started out virtually alone, I now have a number of close confidants who understand full well what is happening to America—and the West. None of them have any love for President Bush.

One thing’s for sure, this "bunch of white guys" isn’t going quietly.

The brainwashing has backfired!

No, I don't think I'd make it in college these days. I don't judge people by the color of their skin, I judge them by the content of their character. I can tell a white asshole, I can tell a black asshole, and I'll avoid both, thank you kindly. If you're a decent sort, I don't care what your skin color is. And I don't judge people by their sexual tendencies - I frankly don't much care what they do, as long as they get a room and do it in private. I don't feel that in order to be accepting of the GLBTQA that I need to be a voyeur into their lives, no matter how much others think I should be.

I guess I'm old-fashioned. Oh, well. Wasn't planning on starting college soon anyway.

J.

Update: Lileks has a ScreedBlog entry up on something similar.

(Hat tip, the Anchoress)

Wow. Looks like the unions really care.

Las Vegas Weekly - The strange business of protesting jobs that may be better than yours

The shade from the Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market sign is minimal around noon; still, six picketers squeeze their thermoses and Dasani bottles onto the dirt below, trying to keep their water cool. They're walking five-hour shifts on this corner at Stephanie Street and American Pacific Drive in Henderson—anti-Wal-Mart signs propped lazily on their shoulders, deep suntans on their faces and arms—with two 15-minute breaks to run across the street and use the washroom at a gas station.

Periodically one of them will sit down in a slightly larger slice of shade under a giant electricity pole in the intersection. Four lanes of traffic rush by, some drivers honk in support, more than once someone has yelled, "assholes!" but mostly, they're ignored.

They're not union members; they're temp workers employed through Allied Forces/Labor Express by the union—United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). They're making $6 an hour, with no benefits; it's 104 F, and they're protesting the working conditions inside the new Wal-Mart grocery store.

Inside, the store manager at the Stephanie Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market says he's perfectly happy with his job, and that his insurance is fine.

"The average rate of pay for Nevada Wal-Mart workers is $10.17 an hour. We have a good insurance program, and every associate—even part-timers—are eligible for the 401k," says Mark Dyson. "There's actually different levels of insurance, dental and medical—I have a $500 deductible, but there's no cap on it. Some other companies' plans have a $1 million cap, but here there's no cap. For example, not long ago we had an associate whose husband needed a liver transplant, and that alone was $600,000; but they didn't have to worry about a cap."

For the least comprehensive medical coverage, Wal-Mart workers pay from $17.50 for individual coverage and $70.50 for family coverage biweekly, according to the company website.

Rivera removes his watch to show the dark tan his arm has gotten working in the sun; he talks about how he takes three buses to get to this work site on weekends; it takes two hours to get there and two hours to get home—a nine-hour day including that transportation for a gross pay of $35.

"I asked him (union organizer Hornbrook), I said, 'How come we're working here for $6 an hour? I need you to help us find a better job. I want information on the union,'" Rivera said.

He was told, he says, to secure his own job with a grocery store, and then the union would help him to be sure the store paid him appropriate wages.

"This is an informational picket line only," Hornbrook said. "We're paying these people. They were out of work before (joining their picket lines). This is an in-between-jobs stop. Picketing isn't a career. But we did hire one of the picketers, she's now working for us for $11 an hour (as a driver) and we pay for gasoline."

J.

New Orleans is the big story - but there were a lot of other areas scraped down to the ground. Murdoc's got some of the pics.

Murdoc Online: Pictures from the air of Gulfport and Biloxi areas

You're looking at MILES of destruction there. And if these aren't enough, go check out the NOAA Katrina site. They've covered the entire area.

There's folks griping because aid didn't come to NO quick enough. Take a look and see why.

J.

It's an interesting theory, explored over at neo-neocon: The birthmark: an identity is a difficult thing to change. She describes herself thusly:"I'm a woman in my fifties, lifelong Democrat mugged by reality on 9/11. Born in New York, living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself leaving the fold and becoming that dread thing: a neocon."

Looks like an interesting site. I'd encourage you to go read it.

J.

Who's been noticing that media coverage of any event is leaning towards the, um, florid and emotional, instead of factual. Power Line has No analysis dammit, we're the MSM - and Austin Bay's put forth his opinions on the subject.

Go ahead, get hysterical. I've got a remote, and I'm not afraid to use it.

J.

Update: Apparently Biden was worse than Kennedy. I'm impressed.

I used to have a fair amount of respect for the Kennedy Clan. However, when Billy Joe Kennedy drove off the Tallahassee Bridge (whoops, mixing watery death scenes there...), er, Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge and left Mary Jo Kopechne to either drown or suffocate - he lost a lot of shine in my eyes and hasn't done much to redeem himself since. Now he's getting to grill John Roberts. Yay.

Roberts dodges specifics on abortion - The Changing Court - MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice nominee John Roberts repeatedly refused to answer questions about abortion and other contentious issues at his confirmation hearing Tuesday, telling frustrated Democrats he would not discuss matters that could come before the Supreme Court.

"I think nominees have to draw the line where they are most comfortable," said Roberts, who also sidestepped questions about civil rights, voting rights and the limits of presidential power in a long, occasionally antagonistic day in the witness chair.

He did say past Supreme Court rulings carry weight, including the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in 1973. But the principle of court precedents allows for overturning rulings, too, he said.

Now, maybe I don't understand the nuances involved here, but taking five to ten minutes to frame a question for Roberts - and then NOT letting him answer the question with any level of detail - doesn't seem to me to be a way of actually finding out whether someone is suitable or not.

But then, that's not really the point, is it? The point is to get your face in the news (and please, Sen. Kennedy, would you spare us your dissolute visage?) and somehow convince (a) the folks in the Democratic Party and (b) the fools who keep electing you based on promises that you have no intention of ever keeping that you're earning your keep and giving them good value for the money.

I really don't think the DNC is quite aware of what they're doing to themselves. They've got themselves a King, whether they realize it or not - and he's not one that'll ever have to face serious opposition.

(And he even has a court jester. How convenient!)

BTW, Props to Arlan Specter, who on occasion told Kennedy and others to STFU and let Roberts actually answer the question.

J.

More often if I feel like it. It's a worthwhile thing, and the need's not going to go away for a while.

There's a lot of other folks to donate to, of course, and you can donate wherever you might want. Methodist Relief is one we support. 100% of donations go to their work. And if you're looking for a more tangible way to help them, you can get the specs for the kits they distribute and make up your own. (This would be a good Scouting project, I think.)

Want to help? Find a way. Give blood, give time, give money, give a hand. (Not literally - no organ banks available at this time.)

Technorati tags flood aid and Hurricane Katrina

J.

"We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down. Man came in said, "All rise." We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog. And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry, 'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against him."

Do they match, or not? You be the judge... so to speak.

J.

Talk about a complete abdication of responsibility.

Wizbang

For all of you who keep blaming Bush and trying to protect Blanco, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you. Blanco got caught on tape by CNN admitting she did not ask for Federal Troops. When she didn't think the cameras were live, she made the startling admission to her press secretary.

AND that's not even the worst of it....

Why didn't she ask for federal troops? As Blanco explained to her press secretary as she wiped away tears, if troops came in, they would "put good people in jail."

She was more worried about the "poor looters" than she was the victims. This is outragous. SHE WEEPS AT THE THOUGHT TO THROWING LOOTERS IN JAIL!

Then she tells her press secretary, "I really need to call for the military, I mean, I really should have started that in the first call." BUSTED!

When Miles O'Brien asks her what day it was she asked for Federal troops, she tried desperately to stammer her way thru the answer like a 9th grade foreign language student trying to mumble their way the the oral part of a final exam.

Sheesh. I wouldn't blame them if a lot of retail chains didn't build back in that area.

J..

Everyone knows the Palestinians have wanted peace for a long time...

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - Aide: Abbas to Order Disarmament of Militants

RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas will demand that armed groups disband immediately after parliament elections in January in a bid to impose order in the Gaza Strip following the Israeli pullout, a top aide said Wednesday.

But Abbas' main rival, Hamas (search), reiterated it will not disarm, and Palestinian officials said they will not risk civil war despite intense international pressure to confront the armed groups. An ongoing stalemate could hamper the rebuilding of impoverished Gaza and cloud prospects for the resumption of peace talks.

It's like watching a bunch of kids get what they want for Christmas, and immediate do all they can to destroy their new toys. It's damn sad to watch.

The Palestinian culture for the last 20-30 years has been so oriented towards death and destruction that it'll take a very charismatic leader to turn it around for them. Sadly, I don't think any leader that might rise to the top now will be oriented towards anything other than destruction.

It's a lot easier to take, and break, than it is to make. We're seeing what the Palestinians are doing when they're given what they ostensibly wanted. It ain't pretty.

J.

National Conversation - Agree or Disagree

"While the rest of the country waves the flag of Americana, we understand we are not part of that. We don't owe America anything - America owes us."

Al Sharpton

Al, if you're not a part of 'it', it's because you chose a long time ago to NOT be a part. If you exclude yourself, then the folks you exclude yourself from are NOT to blame for your exclusion. (I guess I could play the victim and say I've excluded myself from fandom and the SCA - but I chose to gafiate. Same thing with college - if I don't take advantage of the opportunities I've had over the years, is it the fault of the college?)

You can scream "I'm owed, dammit!" until you're blue in the face. You're owed a chance. You were born into a land of opportunity, and if you choose to ignore that and instead become a perpetual victim (because it pays better... either through attention or money), hoping always for someone to make it better, then you'll not be getting all that far.

Al, you've come a lot further than most, playing the perpetual victim card - but it's falling apart around you, and the folks you've encouraged to be victims. You've fostered helplessness, you've fostered anger - and you could have done so much, much more.

Did you ever promote responsibility? Did you ever promote the black family? Tell black men they needed to get married, take care of their women and children? Tell them they needed to get a job and keep a job - lay off the 40s and the drugs and get an education and work their way up? If you ever did, I imagine the "You're owed, dammit!" message got played a lot louder. Ever since I first heard of you, you've been a victim. A noisy victim - a well-paid victim - but always a victim.

Being a victim's easy, Al. Did it myself for a while - until a friend shocked me by turning his back when I started it one time. Sure - taking responsibility for yourself is scary - it means that if you fail it's YOUR fault and it's a lot harder to play the victim card. And you've gotten a lot of attention by being a victim and encouraging others to be victims too (though we won't talk much about Tawana Brawley, okay? That one kind of backfired...) and it's been a pretty good life for you...

But what have you condemned others to?

J.

And it doesn't look much like the 1950's version... but if you take a closer look there's a lot that was predicted.

Cultural jetsam (fun stuff)

Miracles of the Future

See the future from the lens of Popular Mechanic's 1950 issue.
It's easy to laugh at these long range predictions, but the author has a few interesting insights; predicting the basics of Amazon.com, Boston's Big Dig project, microwave convenience food, and the rise of superantibiotics.

Sadly, many of the more far-reaching, utopian predictions haven't yet been realized. I do wish I could hose my living room clean.

J.

In the late 40's and early 50's there were a number of stories put out on records for kids - and I just happened to stumble across this site that's translating them to MP3s and putting up one a week for 2005. This week's entry at Basic Hip Digital Oddio is...

Sally Starr's Adventure to the Moon
Sally Starr
Liberty Bell L-1776 Stereo
This album contains no liner notes
01 Rocket Into Space
02 Meet Space Pilot James
03 City in Space
04 Is It Raining in Paris
05 Story of the Planets
06 Big TV Show in the Sky
07 Round Trips
08 Put a Penny in the Scale
09 Window in Space
10 Sally Walks on the Moon

And there's also http://www.kiddierecords.com/. Damn, these bring back memories...

Okay, I'm finding a lot of this stuff tonight. Take a listen to the "Lasell's Musical Scrapbook 1962 - The Lamplighters" over at Pastor McPurvis' Weekly mp3 Talent Show.

You know, when you compare that sort of music - acapella, not massaged in post-production to a fare-thee-well, to what's current... I don't know about you but I think something got lost along the way... But what, I can't put my finger on. Spontaneity? Singing for the joy of it? I don't know... you tell me what you think.

J.

Looks like it's getting some traction.

boortz.com: Nealz Nuze Today's Nuze

My friends, you have no idea of the impact that The FairTax Book is having on our elected officials in Washington. Officials at the highest levels are expressing their surprise to Congressman Linder of the success of the book, and you can believe that they are ready to take some action. While on vacation I'm writing some items to clarify portions of the book --- and I hope to have them posted in the Nuze by Thursday. In the meantime, if you haven't yet bought or ordered The FairTax Book, please do so. The link above will take you to amazon.com or see if your local book store has any left. Hey ..I'm not trying to pad my own pockets here. I've already told you that my royalties age going 100% to charity, including a rather large check to the Red Cross for Katrina relief. My interest here is in promoting a tax reform plan that I sincerely believe will bring about a positive change in the life of virtually every American, except, perhaps, for the K Street lobbyists who have been making hundreds of thousands a year gaming the present tax system for their clients. The longer we keep The FairTax Book up near the top of The New York Times Bestsellers List, the more attention we get in Washington DC, and the greater the chance that HR 25 is going to get serious consideration in Washington.

Last weekend I was sitting in a restaurant near the west coast. At the next table was a man I knew to be well connected in Washington and Hollywood. (Not mentioning names here.) I actually overheard him telling his luncheon guests about the FairTax! The word is getting around, my friends, and politicians are finding this movement harder and harder to ignore.

As soon as I'm back off vacation I'll be heading out for more book signings. One week from Saturday I'll be at the Republican Leadership Conference at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. I'm told that almost every Republican with presidential aspirations will be there. When I get up before that group to make my presentation on The FairTax I want to be able to tell them that the book is still right up there at the top of the list. The books that are sold between now and Monday afternoon will make the difference ... so you know what to do.

Unfortunately, unlike our elected officials, it's darn near impossible to get rid of the IRS at election time.

J.

(Bumping this to the top tonight it's worth noticing)

With bad news being the MSM's stock in trade, it's perhaps not surprising that this little bit went unnoticed. President Bush and President Talbani had a news conference yesterday, and President Talbani had the following to say.

FOXNews.com - Politics - Transcript: Bush News Conference

TALABANI: Thank you, Mr. President, for your kind remarks. It is an honor for me to stand here today as the representative of free Iraq.

TALABANI: It is an honor to represent the world's youngest democracy.

In the name of the Iraqi people, I say to you, Mr. President, and to the glorious American people, thank you, thank you.

Thank you because you have liberated us from the worst kind of dictatorship. Our people suffered too much from this worst kind of dictatorship. The signal is mass graves with hundred thousand of Iraqi innocent children and women, young and old men. Thank you.

And thanks to the United States, there are now 50 million Muslims in Afghanistan andrated by your courageous leadership and decision to liberate us, Mr. President.

We agree with Mr. President Bush that democracy is the solution to the problems of the Middle East.. (The rest of the speech is below the fold.

MSM - all the news they see fit to cover... If it don't bleed, it don't lead. Did you even SEE this mentioned on the main news shows? I heard this on FoxNews at lunch - and they cut away from the Q&A to get back to the Roberts hearings. (Like those are so transient that you have to watch them constantly lest they blow away.) This wasn't dramatic, so it didn't lead.

And speaking of leading - you've undoubtedly heard about the bombings today in Iraq. Al Quaeda's taking the credit for them - a bus-bomb went up to some unemployed workers, the driver called them over... and blew himself up. Yeah, that'll get the support of the mainstream Iraqi population... "Kick out the infidel now or we'll blow you up!" Very persuasive, don't you think?

J.

You know, I've been thinking this guy's pretty much toast for a long time. He's kept a pretty low profile - obviously knowing that he's the head target in a game of Whack-A-Mole - and if he stuck his head up more than absolutely necessary he'd get whacked.

And let's be blunt - his followers (and handlers, couriers, or what have you) must be pretty darn low on the supply chain of the Al Quaeda organization. Has he released any videos? (1, I think in 4 years) Any recordings? (Two?) Any pics lately? Anything for the true believers to see their icon, the head of their organization?

Ain't been much new stuff, has there?

And I think there's a good reason for that. He's an icon now - he's a figurehead. You don't show your figureheads with, say, a missing arm, or that he's gone senile and needs someone wiping his mouth as he sputters and spits. (And do they have Depends in the mountains he's hiding in?)

Heroes need to go out heroically. Dying of old age and the attendent infirmities isn't 'heroic' at all, and tarnishes the image something awful.

So when I read something like this - I'm kind of mixed. Should we send Dr. Kervorkian on a housecall? (I'd chip in a couple of bucks) Or just let the bastard die of whatever's wrong with him, and hope it's painful and slow-acting?

'Bin Laden is trying to obtain medical attention' - International Terrorism - MSNBC.com

CAIRO - Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is in poor health and is seeking medical attention, the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Hayat said on Wednesday, quoting a U.S. officer in Afghanistan.

"Osama bin Laden is trying to obtain medical attention," Colonel Don McGraw, director of operations at the Combined Forces Command in Kabul, told a group of British reporters, including one from al-Hayat, it said.

J.

You've undoubtedly heard about the firefighters who needed sexual harrasment training before being shipped to NO.

Unfortunately, I wasn't terribly suprised by that.

As a Personnel Specialist in the AF Reserve for 13 years, and active duty in various fields before that - it's my observation that a fair amount of the obsessive attention to detail on paperwork and the proliferation of training requirements are pretty much makework - stuff to keep you busy. At least, in peacetime.

When it comes to training, a lot of it's redundant. First Aid refreshers? Fine - that makes sense. Two hours of Annual Fire Extinguisher Training? It's nothing you can't cover in 15 minutes or less - but someone thought up a requirement for two hours and the class will be two hours - and even then you won't get the chance to actually EXTINGUISH a fire... the EPA'd be all over us for the pollution.

Don't get me started on paperwork during peacetime. Obsessive attention to detail on forms was the norm, requisitions requiring everything be filled out just so, with the correct nomenclature for the item you're requesting and the proper stock number, and no strikethroughs or erasures please, or the form would need to be done over. Same thing with personnel evaluations. Thank God for FormFlow and electronic forms, it made my life a hell of a lot easier. It was good training, though, because when the crunch hit you knew what you could get by without.

Of course, all this makework is during peacetime.

When the shit hits the fan, an awful lot of that falls by the wayside. Got the right stock number? You'll get the item, even if the requisition's filled out in smudged pencil. Red tape and obsessively detail-oriented practices get shoved aside - you get by on the minimum necessary because that's all you've got time for. The other stuff can wait.

You mgiht fill your time in peacetime with junk, but you know what's important for war.

FEMA hasn't realized yet that when you need people quickly, when you need things done FAST, you need to be able to pare your procedures down to the essentials. Eliminate all the 'nice to have' stuff (like sexual harrassment training) and make sure the people with the right skills get to the right place with the right gear ASAP. When the shit hits the fan and every minute counts, the "nice to have" stuff should be the first thing jettisoned.

Unfortunately, you're dealing with a government agency... and these days, the sexual harassment and touchy-feelie social-issue agendas are actually MORE important than the actual mission of the agency. They're an easily measured metric, while performance during a disaster is a bit harder to simulate. So you do your dry runs and concentrate on the stuff that other agencies have loaded you down with... because if you're a manager and someone somewhere down the line looks at a personnel record and doesn't see a particular block checked, if the touchie-feelie stuff didn't get done - it doesn't matter what the purpose, you'll get reprimanded and possibly fired. YOU didn't do things by the book - and if the book says the firefighters you deploy have to have 8 hours of training in multicultural basketweaving before they can be deployed, who are YOU to judge whether or not you can second-guess the book and get them there faster?

Is there a cure?

Sure. But it's nothing that anyone will accept, at least these days.

Cut the crap for the responders. Give them a safety briefing for the area, caution them about the usual hazards of their job. Then let them get to their jobs. If someone gets offended by something someone says or does (and complains about it - in all honesty I think there's a lot of folks who look to be offended so they can have some reason to scream loudly and long and hopefully get some fame/money from it...) point them to the door and tell them that the responders didn't have to come down to save their sorry butts and not be so damn sensitive.

I told you it wasn't going to be acceptable.

There's a particular subgroup in our society that seems to be creating the concept of pre-emptive offense. If someone MIGHT be offended by something, even if it's a remote possibility, they see it as their duty to prevent that possibility. So you end up with firefighters taking sexual harrasment classes... when they're needed to rescue folks from a flood.

So, do you think folks would rather drown than be rescued by someone without proper PC training?

J.

Why Not - Right? seems to be one of them.

I read a bit, got hooked - started at the oldest archive and have moved forward...

Damn.

This is one of those blogs that reads variously like a Mary-Sue, an autobiographical, a romance novel, a tear jerker, to sheer fiction. The extent of detail (and fairly accurate detail, what I recognize) is impressive - though there's enough vagueness that it could be fiction. The author alludes to being a writer - and if this all is fiction she needs to bundle it up and send it off.

If you're looking for an interesting blog, this is one that'll likely keep you occupied for a while. Start at the bottom of the Feb Archive and keep working your way up. It's good.

J.

I love good satire. Good satire skews your perceptions and makes you think. And this is pretty good, if a trifle heavy handed.

Eyes On The Ball News: Americans Forget Truth, Answer Questions Wrong

“I talked to a few African Americans, and they couldn’t wait to rebuild!” said reporter Brian Williams, “When I asked one gentleman how he felt about Bush delaying help because he was black, he had the nerve to tell me that he was more angry with local officials who’ve been promising to fix the levees for decades but spent federal tax dollars on pork instead! Can you believe that? How blinded and brainwashed are these people! I mean they lived in New Orleans, you’d think they would know the truth better than us.

“That’s why I am thankful to be a journalist; I can participate in the spreading of truth and justice and enlightening Americans everywhere.”

Man, I've got a lot of stuff to add to my sidebar...

Well, one of these days, real soon now, I'll get around to it...

J.

ABC, right after the speech?

To ABC's Surprise, Katrina Victims Praise Bush and Blame Nagin | NewsBusters.org

Or NPR, which took the time to get the proper soundbites?

Matt Duffy: NPR: Taking the time to frame it right

Compare and contrast.

J.

Yet Another Journal is authored by Linda, a good friend.

Starfighter's Model Blog isn't updated nearly often enough by James, her husband.

Why Not - Right? is either autobiographical or fictional, or both, or neither - but a damn good read as far as I'm concerned.

Dr. Sanity goes around shining a psychological spotlight on a few of the insanities of life.

My Newz 'n Ideas is the commentary of Rosemary in California. Among the heathen, she keeps herself sane by working 5 blogs, managing 3 for other people, and writing for 4 OTHER people. Pray for her sanity... or a house call from Doc Sanity above.

Rajun Cajun's used to be a SAC missile weenie. If you know what that means, good. If not, he was one of the folks who (in case of attack) would be ready to launch Minuteman missiles against the USSR. Thank heaven he never had to do that.

The Redhunter has an interesting look on things. He's a bit to the right of me - but then a lot of folks are to the left, a lot to the right. Go figure where he stands on YOUR scale.

OxBeef.Net is the not frequently updated blog of Rawb - a decent guy's who's all to willing to believe the worst as far as the country goes.

Murdoc Online has a lot of good stuff. Worth the trip - as long as you're sedated....

neo-neocon describes herself as... "I'm a woman in my fifties, lifelong Democrat mugged by reality on 9/11. Born in New York, living in New England, surrounded by liberals on all sides, I've found myself leaving the fold and becoming that dread thing: a neocon." Another living amongst the heathen. She's got good stuff too.

Well, I'm falling asleep. Got aynthing you think should be added to the sidebar? Toss it in the comments section and I'll take a look at it..

G'night, folks. See you tomorrow...

J.

Solar Minimum Explodes

Just one week ago, on Sept. 7th, a huge sunspot rounded the sun's eastern limb. As soon as it appeared, it exploded, producing one of the brightest x-ray solar flares of the Space Age. In the days that followed, the growing spot exploded eight more times.

Each powerful "X-flare" caused a shortwave radio blackout on Earth and pumped new energy into a radiation storm around our planet. The blasts hurled magnetic clouds toward Earth, and when they hit, on Sept 10th and 11th, ruby-red auroras were seen as far south as Arizona.

So this is solar minimum?

EO Library: Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE)

Perhaps most intriguing, researchers have affirmed that the TSI doesn’t stay constant, but varies slightly with sunspots and solar weather activity. In particular, by analyzing satellite data, scientists have observed a correlation between the Sun’s output of energy and the 11-year sunspot cycle, which physicists have known of since Galileo’s time. These data show that TSI varies just as regularly as the sunspot activity over this 11-year period, rising and falling 1.4 W/m2 through the course of the cycle (0.1 percent of the TSI). There are also longer-term trends in solar weather activity that last anywhere from years to centuries to millennia and may have an impact on global warming.

J.

CNN.com - FBI probes death of driver's license examiner - February 15, 2002

The death of a Tennessee driver's license examiner accused of helping six illegal immigrants get false drivers' licenses was no accident, the FBI said Friday.

Katherine Smith was found burned to death in her car early Sunday, a day before she was to be arraigned on federal charges she helped five Middle Eastern men and one juvenile get fake driver's licenses earlier this month. The five adults are under investigation for possible ties to the September 11 terrorist attacks, law enforcement officials said.

Smith's car was on fire when it struck a utility pole on a rural highway about 30 miles from Memphis, FBI agent Suzanne Nash said Wednesday. Smith's clothing had been soaked with gasoline, leaving her burned beyond recognition, according to authorities.

The FBI said Smith's death was either a homicide or a suicide.

All six lived in New York and are illegal immigrants, according to law enforcement officials.

One of the men, Sakhera Hammad, had a visitor's pass for the World Trade Center dated September 5, 2001. He told authorities he and his cousin, Abdelmuhsen Mahmid Hammad, also charged with trying to obtain a fake license, worked on the tower's sprinkler systems -- a claim authorities have not been able to corroborate.

Investigators say they are also intrigued by the fact that another man implicated in the scam, Khaled Odtllah, drove from New York City to Memphis on September 11.

"As a citizen and as an FBI agent, that's very disconcerting to me that these Middle Eastern males are coming down from New York City to Tennessee to get false driver's licenses," said Phil Thomas of the FBI. "We're hoping we would get a handle on what type of traffic this is."

But authorities acknowledge the men could have had nothing to do with the attacks.

The other named suspects in the license scam are Mohammed Fares and Mostafa Said Abou-Shahin. All were arrested on February 7.

Affidavit: Men paid $1,000 for fake licenses

The Memphis Flyer :: the mid-south's news weekly: Breaking News: Breaking News: TERRORISM TASK FORCE BUSTS BOGUS U of M STUDENT
Was Mahmoud Maawad a University of Memphis student and pilot-wannabe with a passion for flying small planes or an Arab terrorist looking to duplicate the suicide missions of 9/11?

Federal prosecutors in Memphis aren’t saying, but on Thursday they asked a U.S. magistrate to hold Maawad, 29, whose email logon is “pilot747,” without bond until trial. U.S. Magistrate Judge S. Thomas Anderson agreed with Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Parker, and Maaward becomes the second Memphis resident of Arab descent to be held without bond because of investigations by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force. In April, Rafat Mawlawi was jailed in a separate investigation in which prosecutors have linked him to Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida. He is awaiting trial on October 3rd.

Maawad is charged in a criminal complaint with fraudulent use of a Social Security number which he used to get utilities and a credit card and enroll in school. He entered the United States at New York City from Egypt in 1998 and his visitor’s visa expired in 1999. He has been in the country illegally since then. His address is 3557 Mynders Avenue in Memphis, where he moved in June. He previously lived in Olive Branch, Mississippi for an unknown period. He is currently enrolled as an undergraduate student at the University of Memphis, registering as a transfer student from New Jersey but failing to register as an international student.

Maawad was cited on March 11, 2005, by Memphis police for selling alcohol to a minor at 1171 Chelsea in Memphis

Maawad was busted again this week after federal agents searched his apartment and computer on September 9th and examined his Internet purchases of flight instructions and pilot paraphernalia. Since June, Maawad ordered $3,300 of merchandise over the Internet from Sporty’s Pilot Shop in Batavia, Ohio, including a private pilot course, flight simulator software, a flight gear bag, several DVDs, a $239 Navy leather flight jacket, a $19.95 DVD on “How an Airline Captain Should Look and Act,” and instructional programs on “airplane talk.” His email address was pilot747_200@hotmail.com.

After purchasing approximately $2,500 worth of merchandise, Maawad’s debit card was rejected by Sporty’s for lack of funds and his last three orders were not filled. Agents are in the process of examining his computer hard drive.

Perhaps he was going to do an Egyptian remake of Catch Me If You Can?

J.

Iraq Border Fort

Looks like something straight out of Hollywood... what was the movie? Beau Geste?

Fort Zindeneuf, or the like....

J.

The Doctor gives her diagnois...

Dr. Sanity: The Lunatic Fringe

Sadly, the paranoia and delusions exemplified in the above two quotations are probably not amenable to treatment. They are part of a self-induced personality disrder, called "Acquired Narcissism" (although there are plenty of others in their mental world who are clear-cut Narcissists).

People with any type of narcissism believe their feelings and beliefs should be adopted by the world in general--if not voluntarily, then they are prepared to use violence. They believe that their needs are the center of everyone's universe. When confronted by reality, they become enraged and frustrated that it won't conform to their will. It makes them want to destroy reality. Like petulant children, they want what they want when they want it or they'll threaten to do something horrible to you.

And congrats to Donna Brazile - she's not playing politics as usual.

I Will Rebuild With You, Mr. President

On Thursday night President Bush spoke to the nation from my city. I am not a Republican. I did not vote for George W. Bush -- in fact, I worked pretty hard against him in 2000 and 2004. But on Thursday night, after watching him speak from the heart, I could not have been prouder of the president and the plan he outlined to empower those who lost everything and to rebuild the Gulf Coast.

I think there's a lot of folks who think of themselves as being kind and compassionate - who's compassion ends rather abruptly when it's put to the test. I also think there's a fair number of folks who call themselves 'reality-based', who are reality based in the same way the Moral Majority was actually a majority... which it wasn't.

(None of my readers, though. You've given blood or money to the Red Cross lately, right? Or given to some other reputable agency?)

In the end, these are Americans who need help. It doesn't matter one damn bit whether that help comes from a Democrat or a Republican - what matters is that someone helps. Ideology be damned - let's get things taken care of!

J.

Tristan Perich - One Bit Music - Electrophysical

Neat way to distribute the music..

And if you're looking for an unusual Caller ID system, take a look at the Olympia InfoGlobe.....

Ah, technology. Isn't it FUN?

J.

Not again.

Hope it goes west and loses steam...

J.

GROW CUBE ver.01 - EYEZMAZE

Can you figure out the order you click on them? Good luck!

(I'll post the solution below the fold if someone requests it.)

J.

It's an interesting premise...

|| RedState.org - I, Heretic

Here I am going to spout heresy. I am going to argue that the fiscal policies being followed by President George W. Bush represent a breakthrough in conservative — yes, conservative — thinking. They represent good policy; and even better strategy.

I will suggest that President Bush understands money better than any President we have ever had. He understands it better than most economists. He understands it better than our illustrious pundits. President Bush understands money the way a financier understands money. He sees it as a force or a power that one squirts at the world to make the world change. He sees it as a weapon.

Oh, I'm quite aware that money's a tool, and a resource. A weapon... well, his reasoning is interesting. You might find it so also.

J.

The myth of the joyful Jihadi takes a hit.

Confederate Yankee: Lie Like al-Zarqawi , Squeal Like Ali

When you have to kidnap, beat and drug your troops to get them to go into battle, I think it is safe to say that the war is not going well for you.

J.

Um, it's hard to tell just what.Varifrank thinks that they're getting ready to slice out North Korea. His reasoning - that they figure a controlled takedown (and possible reconstruction?) is better than an uncontrolled collapse. (Think judo - you control your opponent's fall until impact.) Can't say that's what's happening, but I can sure understand the reasoning behind it. China's been buying oil like there's no tomorrow, (think strategic reserves) while the citizens have been complaining about low supplies.

It makes sense. NK's been a pain to China for a long time now, and they know when NK collapses the refugees will be streaming north. And there's apparently one heck of a fence at the NK-China border. Russia... well, Russia's got the sealift capabilities. Not too sure what else they'd get out of it...

Two things - enfolding NK into China would likely cure their ambitions to take Taiwan by force. But my big worry would be that NK does a spastic attack on SK when this happens. Yes, they wouldn't be the cause, but that's the directionall their offensive firepower's pointed. Damn, but we live in interesting times...

J.

Man, talk about bad timing.

NASA estimates $104 billion for return to moon - Space.com - MSNBC.com

Despite a stalled space shuttle program, NASA is confident it can launch and sustain human exploration of the moon by 2018, the space agency’s top official said Monday.

The $104 billion plan calls for an Apollo-like vehicle to carry crews of up to four astronauts to the moon for seven-day stays on the lunar surface. The spacecraft, known as the Crew Exploration Vehicle or CEV, could even carry six-astronaut crews to the international space station or fly automated resupply shipments as needed, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said.

If they'd done it in the '90s, I'd have been excited about it.

I look at it now, and can barely keep from yawning. They're going to go with the same sort of tech that Apollo used? And they're going to use a lot of the same contractors. Which means the contractors will look on this as a cash cow and... well, I just have doubts about them delivering. (Cough, cough Venturestar cough.)

Damn, I wish I hadn't gotten cynical about NASA. I'd love to believe this'll happen - but the next President will likely quietly cancel it all.

J.

Dan Rather turns introspective...BREITBART.COM - Emotional Rather blasts 'new journalism order'

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather said Monday that there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career.

Rather famously tangled with President Nixon and his aides during the Watergate years while Rather was a hard-charging White House correspondent.

Addressing the Fordham University School of Law in Manhattan, occasionally forcing back tears, he said that in the intervening years, politicians "of every persuasion" had gotten better at applying pressure on the conglomerates that own the broadcast networks. He called it a "new journalism order."

He said this pressure -- along with the "dumbed-down, tarted-up" coverage, the advent of 24-hour cable competition and the chase for ratings and demographics -- has taken its toll on the news business. "All of this creates a bigger atmosphere of fear in newsrooms," Rather said. Couldn't be that your 'dumbed-down, tarted-up" coverage has caused the problems, could it? That, and the fact you're too busy telling the story in the way YOU want it to be accepted...

Dump the journalist stuff. Dump the entire idea. Go back to reporting on the news. Give us the facts, ALL the facts which are relevant - and then let us decide from there what to think of it. Because your efforts to spin and slant the news are backfiring badly, and you're no longer seen as credible. When you're not seen as credible... people stop watching.

And you, Mr. Rather, are one of the reasons we no longer watch.

J.

... that won't put up iwth the usual media bullshit. Gen. Honore's not pulling any punches at all.

Radio Blogger

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin held a press conference a little bit ago, and started losing control to a media pool assembled that was showing signs of panic, due to the previous incompetence in the region by the local and state government. Lt. Gen. Russel Honore stepped in and literally took over. Here's what he had to say:

...

Honore: Not to my knowledge. Again, the current place, I just told you one time, is the convention center. Once we complete the plan with the mayor, and is approved by the governor, then we'll start that in the next 12-24 hours. And we understand that there's a problem in getting communications out. That's where we need your help. But let's not confuse the questions with the answers. Buses at the convention center will move our citizens, for whom we have sworn that we will support and defend...and we'll move them on. Let's not get stuck on the last storm. You're asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters. We are moving forward. And don't confuse the people please. You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight. And if you don't understand, maybe you'll confuse it to the people. That's why we like follow-up questions. But right now, it's the convention center, and move on.

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time...

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

I LIKE that. It's about time reporters were reminded they're supposed to REPORT.

Honestly, I think most reporters are looking for the big score - the sensational report that'll catapult them up where they can get on network news. They're like waiters and waitresses in Hollywood - part-time actors working tables while hoping for their big break. 99.99% won't ever get it, but they know what DOES get the attention, what the formulas are for sensational reporting. They tried them here - and Gen. Honore smacked them down.

Listen to it here.

I sure hope it'll be a trend.

J.

... just how LITTLE about this we've heard? Oddly enough, if the voting was a disaster it'd be front-page news. But voting, in Afghanistan, after all the problems they've had, after being freed... doesn't even fit as front-page news less than three years after the Taliban fell. Women voting - where before under Taliban rule they could be shot for even making noise on the street.

Journalists. They decide there's no story, and you won't see a thing.

Vote count begins in Afghan elections - South and Central Asia - MSNBC.com

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan on Tuesday began counting votes cast in its historic parliamentary elections, and al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader criticized the election in a tape aired on Arabic television.
Several of the country’s 34 counting centers began tallying ballots as others waited for votes to be delivered, said a spokesman for the Afghan-U.N. election board, Aleem Siddique. Helicopters and even donkeys were being used to transport ballots in hard-to-reach areas of the country.

Siddique said the counting centers expected to receive all the estimated 6 million ballots by Thursday. Some 7,000 people have been enlisted to count the votes, a process expected to take weeks.

Good on them.

J.

... but was a Democrat, you think we'd see this same headline?

Top Democrat Says He'll Vote No on Roberts - New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 - The Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Tuesday that he would oppose the confirmation of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice, surprising both the White House and fellow Democrats still conflicted about how to vote.

In becoming the first Democrat to declare formally how he intended to vote, Mr. Reid may have made it more difficult for fellow Democrats to support Judge Roberts. Many Senate observers expected Mr. Reid, who comes from a Republican-leaning state and is opposed to abortion, to support Judge Roberts.

And the Democratic leader himself said Tuesday that he had earlier given the White House a list of nominees who would be objectionable and that Judge Roberts was not on it.

This is partisan gamesmanship, nothing more. Roberts is about as moderate and centrist a judge as it's possible to find. He's a good choice, capable and competent for the job (in my estimation) and now Reid says he's not good enough.

Well, damn. Who would he suggest, then?

I'd suggest the Democrats take a look at Iraq, and how the Sunnis screwed up when it came to politics. I think they're going the same way, which will have the same results. And it's not going ot get them what they want.

J.

On Mars? From Instapundit came the following link -

Mars Global Surveyor: Mars For Press

New gullies that did not exist in mid-2002 have appeared on a Martian sand dune.

That's just one of the surprising discoveries that have resulted from the extended life of NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, which this month began its ninth year in orbit around Mars. Boulders tumbling down a Martian slope left tracks that weren't there two years ago. New impact craters formed since the 1970s suggest changes to age-estimating models. And for three Mars summers in a row, deposits of frozen carbon dioxide near Mars' south pole have shrunk from the previous year's size, suggesting a climate change in progress.

The sun has cycles, long and short term - and we'd be foolish to ignore that fact when we're trying to establish a baseline value for global temperatures.

J.

I could think of worse states to move to. The folks in Mississippi seem to have it together.

It's a job that makes even big boys cry, but we'll get it done

...

School buses hauling refugees to shelters north - an idea Louisiana just now figured out - have been running since the day after the storm. They are pouring in here by the hundreds. Red Cross has been doing a great job of setting up relief shelters in our area. Local governments have opened all of the convention centers and school auditoriums to them. I know it's hard to believe, but the first week's local Friday night football games were all canceled. Our efforts were needed elsewhere.

My daughter is editor of the local university newspaper. She asked me what she could do for these folks, and I told her, "The main thing they need right now is bottled water." So she made a few phone calls and worked with her newspaper and the local TV stations. In 24 hours they collected over 600 gallons.

This story is typical and is happening all over the state.

When the winds eased up, pulpwood haulers (lumberjacks, to you Yankees) showed up at interstates and main highways heading south. Started cutting up the downed trees with their own chainsaws and loading them with their hydraulic boom-hauling trucks. Opening the way south for our relief effort.

Nobody called them. They just showed up and started doing what had to be done. Welcome to Mississippi.

Read the whole thing - it's worth the time.

The uncommon thing about heroism is that there's so many who, when given the chance, do heroic things and think so little of them. It's just doing "what had to be done", or "just helping out", or "just doing what was right".

God bless them all.

Hat tip to Love America First for posting the link to this.

J.

Is it all that surprising that the levees might not have been constructed to spec?

Experts blame flooding on faulty levees - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com

But with the help of complex computer models and stark visual evidence, scientists and engineers at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center have concluded that Katrina's surges did not come close to overtopping those barriers. That would make faulty design, inadequate construction or some combination of the two the likely cause of the breaching of the floodwalls along the 17th Street and London Avenue canals — and the flooding of most of New Orleans.

But inspector bribes are a lot cheaper than quality concrete, steel, and workmanship.

Update: Looks like someone knows something. Hard to tell about the veracity, of course...

J.

In the eyes of the law, of course, you get a bit of variance - your equality is kind of predicated on your ability to pay for a good lawyer - but the theory is sound.

Socially, where 'equality' has been enforced (paywise, for example) it's not been terribly sucessful.

But let's be honest, here. We're not 'equal', and that's pretty apparent. Some folks are smarter than others. Some folks are stronger than others. Some folks are better looking than others. Some have faster reaction times, some have better vision, some have better hearing. This is a fact of life, even if it's one that a lot of folks would like to ignore when they start talking about 'equality'.

We're not all 'equal'.

Now, envision a world where 'equality' is enforced. Not willingly ascribed to by all, but grimly legislated with deadly force as the end punishment for not wearing your handicaps.

This is the world of "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut.

Enjoy. And be glad we aren't all 'equal'.

J.

Cassandra over at Villainous Company has an interesting little rant. Seems some folks (Rev Jesse and Al S.) are saying that Bush is a racist. Now, seeing that their very jobs require there be blacks somewhere who feel like they've got to pay those two to be the mouthpieces of Black America, it's not surprising they're doing everything they can to divide folks. But go, read - because Bush is getting some support from very unlikely places...

Villainous Company: Bush, Race, And Unintended Consequences

It is axiomatic on the Left that white people 'marginalize minorities' and 'treat them as Other'. It's time to stop treating blacks as somehow less intelligent, less industrious, less capable than we are. They are none of these things. By constantly lowering the bar for them, we are subsidizing and incenting failure. The soft bigotry of low expectations is not kindness: it is cruelty of a particularly insidious nature, for it is both unspoken and, because it masquerades as kindness, almost impossible to combat.

It saps the will and destroys initiative. And it lessens the dignity of the recipient, for how can he not see himself as forever inferior to Lord or Lady Bountiful, who oh-so-generously don't expect Jamika or Daunte to do as well in school as little Chandler or Erica?

Is that really what Black America wants? How long do they want Whitey to make excuses for them? It seems to be only conservatives these days who believe they could be smart enough, hard working enough, good enough to win, even if the playing field isn't really all that level. Maybe we'd just like to see a little of that outrage directed in a more positive direction for a change. Imagine what could be accomplished?

J.

So...

This, coming on the heels of Katrina, is severely taxing the Red Cross. Give if you can, give blood if you can, donate a pillow, a few cans of food, a blanket, a pack of disposable diapers, a stuffed animal for a kid, every bit helps.

Also consider giving to Methodist Relief. 100% of donations go to their work. And if you're looking for a more tangible way to help them, you can get the specs for the kits they distribute and make up your own. They'll be needed.

Technorati tags flood aid and Hurricane Rita

J.

Because you might be missing something...

(Yeah, it's in French. Keep trying until you get to the galleries.)

J.

in the upper left and right corners.

I first noticed them over at "Why Not, Right?" - who had a link to Jim over at bRight & Early who had the code and the .gifs. Put 'em in your image file, put the code in your blog index and css stylesheet, and you've got it.

Now if he'd do one for UMCOR...

Hmmm. On second thought... Heh. I can make my own. If you want one, just go ahead and snag it. Rightclick on it, and save it on your system. It's not pretty, it's not tapered well, but it gets the point across.

J.

Salt Lake Tribune - Opinion

It is the other flood: The outpouring of concern for the poor of New Orleans. According to nearly every journalist in America, our consciousness has been raised about the invisible scourge of poverty in this country, and nothing is too much to ask when addressing the plight of the disadvantaged evacuees of New Orleans. They should get every form of aid possible - except, that is, assistance that might help give them more control over their lives.

The objection to these Bush proposals isn't fiscal, but philosophical. They serve to undermine the principle of government dependency that underpins the contemporary welfare state, and to which liberals are utterly devoted. In a reversal of the old parable, liberals don't want to teach people how to fish if they can just give them federally funded seafood dishes instead.

New Orleans was partly a catastrophe of the welfare state, which has subsidized inner cities with countless billions of dollars throughout the past 30 years, with little to show for it except more social breakdown. The past few weeks should be the impetus for ''bold, persistent experimentation,'' as Franklin D. Roosevelt put it, in the country's social programs. Instead, we are likely to get more spending on more of the same, and eventually everyone's attention will shift once again from the shame of New Orleans and the persistent failure of the welfare state.

I'm hoping that something good will come of the disasters. I fear, however, that a lot of folks are going to fight tooth and nail against any changes. It won't be fair to the people subjected to them - but there's a lot of folks who have a lot invested politically in the status quo, and don't want it changed at all.

J.

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - North Korea: U.S. Planning Nuclear Attack

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Wednesday accused the United States of intending to disarm the communist country and then "crush it to death with nuclear weapons" — two days after a landmark disarmament agreement that was expected to ease tensions.

North Korea pledged to give up its nuclear weapons program in return for economic aid and security assurances at six-nation talks in Beijing on Monday — the first breakthrough in more than two years of negotiations.

However, the country's rhetoric since then has cast doubt on its commitment to the agreement and underscored its unpredictability, though none of its negotiating partners say they expect a breakdown in the disarmament talks, scheduled to continue in November.

Oh, right. Like we've got nothing ELSE to do than attack a shitty little country with nukes - when all we need to do is wait a bit and let it fall apart on its own.

J.

You've got to buy them.

Man, this just torques me off.

SPACE.com -- Senate Clears NASA to Buy Russian Spaceships

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate approved Sept. 21 a bill that would clear the way for NASA to buy the Russian Soyuz vehicles it needs to continue to occupy the International Space Station beyond this year.

The bill was introduced Sept. 15 by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) to provide temporary relief from provisions in the Iran Nonproliferation Act of 2000 that bar U.S. purchases of Russian human spaceflight hardware as long as Russia continues to help Iran in its pursuit of nuclear know-how and advanced weapons technology.

(Makes me wonder, if we'd accepted, how many of those doctors would have jumped ship and gone the political asylum route when they were no longer needed...)

But our having to buy Russian systems? Man, how they've dropped the ball in Washington and NASA...

J.

Aside from a daily body count, you'll not get much from the MSM - and with Hurricane Rita, now they've got a good excuse to ignore it 24/7. (Hey, I understand, they've got to pay the bills and by heaven that's only done by going with stories that people care about. Rita's suspenseful, good for obsessive coverage, and that'll keep the viewers glued to the tube.)

But anyway, if you're looking for a bit of solid food instead of network formulas, check out The Fourth Rail - they do excellent coverage of the entire situation in Iraq.

J.

Apparently they're just not getting much in the way of listeners.

Summer Ratings Trends Released For Key Cities

And their 'funding irregularities' are getting looked at a bit more - and have caused the Gloria Wise center to be kicked out of the Boys and Girls club system. (Bugmenot here...)

Well, good luck to them. Perhaps they can try a plead-a-thon like NPR. However... it really looks like the customer base may not be there to support them in the manner to which they'd like to become accustomed.

Which is profitable...

J.

The Fairtax Book by Neal Boortz and John Linder has been selling pretty well. It's inspired a good bit of discussion about how things might be changed as far as our tax structures go. It's attracted attention in high places, too. (Yes, apparently Bush can read, okay? Take a look at the book on his desk on Air Force One. High places, get it? Nudge, nudge.)

It's #7 on the Amazon.Com non-fiction list. However, the reviews for it frequently ignore the actual contents of the book. Amazon.com: Reviews for Books: The FairTax Book. Go figure.

There are a LOT of folks invested in our current tax scheme. (H&R Block, Quicken, Tax Cut and TurboTax, tax lawyers and accountants immediately come to mind, along with the IRS) and it looks like a lot of them are tossing up their objections in the reviews. Oddly enough, a considerable number of the negative reviews seem rather like the same person wrote them. Out of curiosity, out of the latest 35 reviews, I figured I'd note down the positives and negatives.

The vast majority of negatives (23 out of 24) were from first time reviewers. (They didn't have any other book, video, DVD, or toy reviews under their names.) The reviews normally didn't have much to say about the book itself - but instead they were posting about how bad the idea was and tossing up unconnected factoids. (Or facturds, as I call them.) They're not designed to increase understanding, they're designed to scare folks off the idea.

Out of the 11 positive posts, there were 5 who had more than one review to their names, and they addressed the issues the book covered.

What does it all mean?

Well, there's folks who don't want the tax system changed. They've got it good the way things are now - and they'll lie like a cheap rug in order to keep things as they are now. The question is - will their screaming and shouting drown out the thoughtful conversation and derail the possibility of change? Or will they be ignored, and end up having to find real jobs when the FairTax is implemented?

Time will tell. It wouldn't hurt, however, to give your representatives a litte 'nudge'.

J.

New Orleans levee fails; water pours in again - Hurricanes' Wrath - MSNBC.com

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Rita’s steady rains sent water pouring over a patched levee Friday, cascading into one of the city’s lowest-lying neighborhoods in a devastating repeat of New Orleans’ flooding nightmare.

“Our worst fears came true,” said Maj. Barry Guidry of the Georgia National Guard.

“We have three significant breaches in the levee and the water is rising rapidly,” he said. “At daybreak I found substantial breaks and they’ve grown larger.”

On the good side, there's nobody in that area to evacuate. On the bad side - it'll likely stay soggy for a while.
J.

I guess it all depends on your frame of reference... or if you're looking to be offended. Apparently, Captain's Quarters Cpatain Ed dared use the 'a' word when describing Michael Steele, Maryland's lieutenant governor.

Who happens to be black.

Apparently Oliver Willis took offense.

As posted in the comments:

I think perhaps the Left is obsessed with this because they have nothing of real substance to discuss.

And I found this over on Protein Wisdom:

Moribund intentionalism and the death of the author II: The Wrath of Cant

Of course, what is striking about this bit of faux-intellectualized piffle is that it has the practical effect of suggesting that “frameone,” by virtue of his supposed understanding of language and his predilection for phenomenological interpretation (which, for that to work, needs to ascribe to Captain Ed’s original utterance “unconscious” motivations that “frameone,” presumably thanks to his preternatural ability to tease out hidden substructures in the dialogic web, can identify), is above falling prey to the very forces he claims are informing Ed’s language.

I hadn’t the first clue that “articulate” was perjorative in any sense. I consider myself an “articulate” person. I would consider “articulate” to be a compliment in any situation.

So, this is part of the culture that sees academic accomplishments and using proper English as “trying to be white?” I was aware of that. I can see how such attitudes might develop but it doesn’t make the enablers any less evil. Anyone who tells a poor child (of any color whatsoever) that it’s a bad thing to be articulate is a bad person. If they say it from a position of education and wealth, they are pure evil.

And if Oliver or frameone or whomever expects me to feel guilty (or even worry about) using English words in ordinary ways, tough. I won’t. I gave that up a long time ago with all sorts of other unhealthy “people pleaser” habits. The fact is, that I’m not responsible for the emotional state of other people. I’m not responsible for asking how high or even jumping every time someone tells me to jump. I’m not psychic so that I can be responsible for knowing what new words have become off limits today and which ones will be off limits tomorrow.

Posted by Synova

Slightly different connotation now than 40 years ago...

J.

Went to Six Flags last night - Sue got some Corporate Night tickets. It wasn't terribly crowded - but the rides were operating at half-capacity. And some were problematic - I really wanted to go on "Superman: Ultimate Flight" and "Deja-Vu" - but they were apparently not as reliable as they should be. But other rides were up, and I got Aaron up twice and and Sue up once on "Freefall" and did the penny trick.

I am struck by the cost of food and drink at that place. I know labor's not cheap - but they definitely could teach Disney a thing or two about separating the customer from their money. We had dinner (2 cheeseburger baskets, two large drinks, three cookies and a bottle of water) for about $30. (The fresh chocolate chip cookies seem to be the best value in the park, at 3 for $2.50. Can't live on cookies alone, though..) A 20 oz. vending machine Coke was $3. Thankfully, we didn't get into the gift shops. Got home well after midnight - Aaron fell asleep in the car.

This morning, we had a Comcast service visit scheduled. Internet out of here's been spotty in the evenings - and I finally got aggravated enough to go ahead and call it in. Apparently in the signal ranges they use for broadband internet (650-680mhz) there's about a 9db signal drop at the street - though the lower frequencies (for TV and channels up to about 200) are coming in quite strong. So they'll likely be installing an amplifier on the line - because if WE have that problem likely everyone else does... they just haven't been aggravated enough to call it in.

But what was amazing was it was scheduled between 11 and 2 - and the guy range the doorbell at 11:03.

I'm impressed.

And it looks like Rita didn't hit as hard as they expected. Thank heaven for small favors.

Have a good day!

J.

But then, Goddard's first sucessful rocket didn't go all that high - and the idea was eventually developed into the Saturn 5.

Space elevator robot passes 1,000-foot mark - Space.com - MSNBC.com

A private group has taken one small step toward the prospect of building a futuristic space elevator.

LiftPort Group Inc., of Bremerton, Wash., has successfully tested a robot climber — a novel piece of hardware that reeled itself up and down a lengthy ribbon dangling from a high-altitude balloon.

The test run, conducted earlier this week, is seen as a precursor experiment intended to flight validate equipment and methods to construct a space elevator. This visionary concept would make use of an ultra-strong carbon nanotube composite ribbon stretching up to 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from Earth into space.

J.

...is that they're not built to be evacuated quickly. A city is where people live, work and play - not someplace where people practice frequent bug-outs.

It's a problem with any city, really. Above a certain population (I'd estimate that it could be as low as 75k, but depending on location and transportation routes might be as little as 10k) there's no reasonable way to evacuate the city in a short time frame.

Atlanta's a good exaqmple of that. As far as transportation infrastructure goes. we've got it. 6 Interstates going in and out, a ring road to transfer traffic around - and give an unusual situation during rush hour and you've got gridlock. The road system is designed to handle X cars per hour. when the number of cars hits X+20%, things slow considerably. When it hits 5X, you might as well stay where you are.

There's going to be a slew of post-mortems detailing exactly what went wrong with the evacuations of New Orleans and Houston - and a lot of criticisms will be leveled at city planners for not planning for massive evacuations. But short of changing completely the structure of a city, you can't change it from a place where people live, work, and play to a place where people can easily and regularly evacuate from en mass.

J.

Sigmund, Carl and Alfred is an interesting blog looking at a little bit of everything from a psychological standpoint. Especially interesting are two posts -
Sigmund, Carl and Alfred: Behind The Veil: Muslim Women And Our Friends

Saudi Arabia, home to Wahabbism, has a problem with women. That is no secret, of course. What is forgotten however, is that it wasn't always so. From the 1950's to the 1970's, Arab women had a lot more freedom than they do now. In fact, to understand the road traveled by Arab women over the last 30 years, one only has to visit Dubai- the place where Arabs go to sin. There are more prostitutes in Dubai per capita than anywhere else in the world. That however, is another matter, for another discussion. For now, we want to look at the 'facts on the ground,' such as they are, in much of the Wahabbi world.

Chances are you were unaware that Bahrain is engaged in an intense internal debate. There is a serious move to reinstate sex segregation in it's national University. The debate has westerners are rare look into the reality of life in what is greater Arabia. There have been the inevitable debates, lobbying and student demonstrations on either side of the issue. At the fore, is the amazing spectacle of a modern society, albeit religiously subjugated, facing off against desert and Bedouin Islam.

Desert Islam is neurotic about sex- and anything remotely suggestive of sex. They believe that men and women, if allowed to mingle freely for even the shortest time, will end up in a sexual embrace. That is why sexual segregation is a fact of life in Universities in the region. In Saudi Arabia, men and women aren't just segregated. They attend different institutions. Interestingly, male teachers are allowed to interact with female students- provided they are in a different room- equipped with a video camera. If a female student has a question, she must use a telephone. Really.

Raskolnikov goes on to discuss the obvious, the not so obvious, those who want change and those who don't. On the surface, his post is like a voice in an empty church- there is plaintive quality to it and there is an undeniably lonely quality to that voice. His voice isn't one of resignation or hoplessness, but rather, a voice of recognition at the magnitude of the problem and the amount of work he- and his community- faces. There is a tacit admission that the problems- and therefore, the solutions- are communal. Differences need to be put aside if a viable community is to survive.

It is easy to read his post from a distance, but in reality, the problems he is describing are problems the community at large, faces.

What Raskolnikov doesn't say, at least in so many words, is the true nature of the problem. We have replaced familial obligations with the obsession of the self. Individual 'rights' and needs have become more important than family and community. The phoney love of self and ensuing need for self gratification, trumps all else- family and community included. We do not need to imagine a world where parents believe their needs supersede those of their children. We are living in that world, right now. Parents no longer owe their devotion to their chidren- it is the children that must accept conditional parenting.

Whereas we were once told that we were islands, each of us, in that stream of community, we now demand to be contiments- immovable and unresponsive. We owe nothing- but rather, we are owed.

J.

When something demonstrably doesn't work, should you keep tossing money at it? When something kind of works, do you figure out what's keeping it from working right and correct it? Or just put a sign on it that says "Do not touch"?

Dr. Sanity addresses some interesting insights on that sort of thing in her post Spare Me The Hysteria

When is someone going to point out that the Democrats have NO REAL INTEREST IN ACTUALLY HELPING POOR PEOPLE ESCAPE POVERTY? Because if all those poor people did escape poverty and begin to pursue their own happiness, then the Democrats could no longer blame poverty on Republicans. Notice how every minority person who has escaped poverty and who begins to think that maybe the Democratic social programs do much more harm than good is immediately labeled a "traitor" to their race, or class, or gender? Notice how all "concerned and compassionate and caring" people are only allowed to think one way--the Democratic Party way?

This is why we cannot have even the most simple debate in this country about spending priorities; about long-term solutions to social problems; about what it means to be an American. At the slightest mention of pursuing any social strategy that does not involve pouring endless amounts of taxpayer monies down the black holes of worthless social program; then the Democrats resort to the pathetic cult of victimhood, better known as the Marxist dialectic ("you are either OPPRESSED, or you are an OPPRESSOR").

There is no greater sin in the Democratic Party's bible than to fail to give lip service to caring about the poor and helpless--even if your behavior and programs actually facilitate the poverty and encourage the helplessness. Appearance is all that matters. (For the absolute proof of this, all you need to do is listen to the sound and fury of both Clintons, who in reality stand for nothing and signify nothing).

What if poverty and hopelessness and all social problems for that matter, could be solved by shifting the paradigm from the Marxist dialectic to one of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness? To one of personal empowerment and responsibility instead of perpetual victimhood? What if we unleash the human spirit and allow people to pursue their happiness; instead of having a vested interest in keeping the poor and helpless...poor and helpless?

What if we actually developed a plan that encouraged the best within people--their benevolence, their kindness, their love of their fellow man; instead of stoking the fires of envy, racism, greed and irresponsibility?

Maybe the Republican alternatives don't "kill" poor people? Maybe they might even help poor people stop being poor? Maybe there isn't a dastardly Republican plot to "audit" or engage in open "warfare" against poor people. Maybe President Bush doesn't "hate" black people at all? Maybe non-Christians aren't going to be taken out and summarily executed by this adminsitration? Maybe women will not be forced into wearing burkhas or hijabs by the "medieval" policies of Republicans but by the "progressive" and politically correct policies of the Democrats instead?

Well, yeah. Sure. We're rich enough to toss a few alms out. But those alms weren't attached to any conditions - like improve yourself, get an education, get some training so you could get a job... because such was seen as an infringement on their rights - on their self-esteem. How dare we require them to actually accomplish something to continue receiving help? How dare we suggest they learn how to get out of poverty? Instead, for decades the money had no strings attached. Free money - there for the taking. No shame, no guilt, just take it if you need it and make your life with it.

I remember the one time I used food stamps. THAT hurt. I felt like it was an admission I was a total failure. "Poor baby, you're so damn lame we'll take care of you." I never used them again.

There's lots of folks who get used to that pretty quick. I'm not one of them. But there's folks who do. We've got what, third-generation welfare recipients? Congrats - you've figured out you don't need to work. You understand what's important - keeping yourself down so that check will come in each month. Forget education, forget improvement - you gotta keep that check coming in... And if a Democrat tells you you've got to vote for them to keep that check - you'll vote just as they tell you.

Doc Sanity closes with:

Isn't New Orleans the perfect example of how these social programs have done worse than nothing to end the cycle of poverty and dependence that is epidemic there? Maybe we could stop the mindless, reflex Marxism parlor trick of framing every debate so that the Democrats become the "champions of the oppressed" and the Republicans become the "oppressors"? Is that too much to ask for in a free society?

J.

FlashEarth Location.

Quick hint ... Heracles took his place for a day...

J.

Captain's Quarters

The former leading political party, the Democratic Left Alliance that descended from the former Communists that ran Poland during the Soviet era, dropped from 41% in the previous election to 11% yesterday, not even qualifying as the official opposition.

Heh. Right.

The Revolution's going on. Marx just didn't figure his philosophy would be the one tossed into the dustbin of history. Perhaps it's because his philosophy was constructed along the capitalist lines of the time - with the power being held by the central comittees instead of the capitalist bosses. The names were changed - but all that happened was that the USSR was turned into a big company town.

With capitalism decentralizing, distributing itself out - it sure seems like much more the ideal that Marx envisioned, instead of the failed rigid, authoritarian structure that Communism devolved into.

J.

Here's your chance - check out the National Budget Simulation, and see if you can come up with $200 billion to rebuild New Orleans.

It's actually pretty easy, when you don't have to worry about real-world results.

J.

Well, everyone bumps up a notch.

FOXNews.com - U.S. & World - U.S. Special Forces Kill No. 2 Terrorist in Iraq

WASHINGTON — U.S. Special Forces killed Al Qaeda's (search) No. 2 terror mastermind in Iraq (search), Defense Department officials said.

FOX News has confirmed that Abu Azzam (search), who was believed to have been in charge of the financing of terrorist cells in the war-torn country, was killed during a raid in Baghdad early Monday morning Iraq time. Azzam is thought to be the top deputy to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search), Iraq's most wanted terrorist.

I wonder if Al Quaeda's got the same sort of structure? Where, if Abu X gets nicked, Abu Y takes his place, and everyone under them moves up a notch? Seems to me like their table of organization's likely a bit thin, and the lower-down folks aren't exactly encouraged in their initiatives...

In retrospect, I'd say they probably don't. If you take a look at De Atkine's Why Arabs Lose Wars you'll see some things that indicate unless a Western heirarchial tier model is used in their organization, the decapitation of the officer corps leaves a leaderless and ineffective mob. Take out the guy with the connections (and cash) to buy explosives and such, and they're SOL.

And as far as communications go - if they've been running on the traditional revolutionary cell model taking out #2 may well have cut the chain of command in a vital place. If they're dependent on the cell model, Z will have severe difficulties contacting #3 - he may not know #3's identity.

Time will tell - but the more the leadership is killed off, the harder Zarqawi's job gets.

J.

Another classic comedian goes offstage...

FOXNews.com - Foxlife - Actor Don Adams Dies at 82

Adams (search), the wry-voiced comedian who starred as the fumbling secret agent Maxwell Smart in the 1960s television spoof of James Bond movies, "Get Smart," has died. He was 82.

Adams died of a lung infection late Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center (search), his friend and former agent Bruce Tufeld said Monday, adding the actor broke his hip a year ago and had been in ill health since.

Godspeed, sir... and would you believe... thank you?

J.

For decades now, fans of Star Trek and Star Wars (not to mention other SF and fantasy genres) have been writing their own stories. Some were pretty decent. Some were, to put it charitably, right down there with the whale poop at the bottom of the Marianas trench.

But MAN, there was a whole lot of it. Regular fiction, slash fiction, Mary-Sues - it was out there.

And now, with simple/easy/cheap CGI and video - the fan base can do their own episodes. Of course, the actors aren't quite the same - but then, the original actors who played Romeo and Juliet in Shakespear's day have been dust for a long time, yet it's still presented worldwide.

So, if you've got some time I suggest you take a look at: Star Trek New Voyages

In the 23rd century, space is the Final Frontier. Join Captain Kirk, Mister Spock, Doctor McCoy and the rest of the crew as year four of the five year mission continues. Boldly go back to where it all began aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise and travel the stars to worlds as yet unknown, seeking out new life and new civilizations. THIS is Star Trek - New Voyages.

Update: Well, I've watched the first episode. And I'm... thrilled and tickled. They WANT it to work, so much that it's easy to suspend the disbelief. The 'real' special effects are about late '60s TV quality. The CGI is pretty good, though I get the feeling a DVD version would look a lot better, resolution-wise. Overall, 10 out of 10 for effort and ingenuity, 8 out of 10 for plot and characterization and acting, 5 out of 10 for exterior special effects. They've really, really recreated the feel of TOS. It's clearly done by amateurs - but their love for it shows.

J.

Turn it inside out - and you've got this.

VirtuSphere Immersive Virtual Reality: Science Fiction in the News

VirtuSphere provides a mechnical basis for truly immersive virtual reality environments, permitting the user to move about in virtual space by simply walking.

J.

I've seen ancedotes for some time that education in institutes of higher learning is getting sidetracked. Apparently there's some rather major problems in certain academic institutions. Is the pursuit of truth only to be done when it avoids stepping on politically correct toes?

OpinionJournal - Ivory Cower

University presidents have lost their dignity.

BY VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

....

As our own industrial, agricultural and manufacturing sectors decline, and as we suffer from increasing national debt, trade deficits, energy dilemmas and weak currency, Americans have maintained relative parity largely through information-based technology and superior research--all predicated on a superb system of higher education. At some point, Mr. Summers, Ms. Denton, Ms. Hoffman and Mr. Birgeneau might have wondered what precisely was the system that produced their lavish salaries and great campuses--and what protocols of merit, transparency, intellectual honesty and scholarly rigor were necessary to maintain them.

More importantly, we have lost sight of what university presidents are supposed to be. Their first allegiance ought to be to honesty and truth, not campus orthodoxy masquerading as intellectual bravery amid a supposedly reactionary society. In a world of intellectual integrity, Robert Birgeneau would ask, "Why are Asians excelling, and what can Berkeley do to encourage emulation of their success by other ethnic groups?" Denice Denton might wonder whether open hiring, monitored by affirmative action officers, applies to university staff or only those who are not associates of the president. President Hoffman would decry Ward Churchill's crass behavior and order a complete review of affirmative action and the politicized nature of hiring, retention, and tenure practices at Colorado. And Larry Summers? In the old world of the campus, he would defend free inquiry and expression, and remind faculty that all questions are up for discussion at Harvard. And if self-appointed censors wished to fire him for that, then he would dare them to go ahead and try. (ed. note - I must admit I was rather astounded that a professor would nearly barf at the mention of the idea that men and women might be different...)

The signs of erosion on our campuses are undeniable, whether we examine declining test scores, spiraling costs, or college graduates' ignorance of basic facts and ideas. In response, our academic leadership is not talking about a more competitive curriculum, higher standards of academic accomplishment, or the critical need freely to debate important issues. Instead, it remains obsessed with a racial, ideological, and sexual spoils system called "diversity." Even as the airline industry was deregulated in the 1970s, and Wall Street now has come under long-overdue scrutiny, it is time for Americans, if we are to ensure our privileged future, to re-examine our era's politicized university.

We give 'victims' a lot of credence in our society. Witness Cindy Sheehan, who had 'absolute moral authority' because of the death of her son. I had sympathy for her at first - but when she started praising the folks who killed her son I lost all shreds of that sympathy. We tend (possibly unwisely) to let those who proclaim themselves victims, or who purport to speak for victims, influence public and private policies more than we should, in my opinion.

Perhaps it's all part of a pendulum swing. We get to a point socially where we realize we've gone too far, and then go back the other way some. But there's always someone who wants to give the pendulum a push to advance what they think is right (see Prohibition) and the solutions they espouse often cause more trouble than the original problem.

J.

Or, to be more accurate - opinion pollls.

If you've ever had to use a map to get from one place to another, you know that two things are absolutely essential when using one.

You have to know where you're going.

And you have to know where you are.

That would seem pretty obvious, right? That you have to know where you are before you can figure out how to get to your destination?

Okay, follow along with me on this. Once you know where you are, and where you're going, you've got to figure out the best way to get there. A good topographical map will give you an idea of the terrain you're going to be going over, and you can use that info to figure out the course of least resistance. At least, as far as the map's concerned... because in real world conditions aren't always so simple. If you're following a trail, it could be blocked, washed out, overgrown to a point where you've got to fight your way through - and you might just give up in disgust and head for another destination that looks more reachable on the map.

If you're using a city map to plot a route between A and B, you have the same sorts of challenges. You've got to worry about blocked roads, neighborhoods you don't want to go through (depending on time of day) and/or weather conditions and expected traffic for the time of day. (Add in the price of gasoline any more, and you might want to stay home.)

Now - suppose you've got a starting point, a destination, and a route planned out. You start out - you've got a long way to go and not all that long to get there. Three stoplights later, you see a guy on the corner holding up a sign. It says "Turn Left". The person next to him has a sign saying "Turn Right".

What should you do?

You continue on. At the next corner (bear in mind that you know the route you're taking might be difficult in spots, but it will get you to the destination) there's four people. Two have signs that say "Turn Right". One has a sign that says "Turn Left". The fourth has a blank sign, but he's waving it vigorously.

What should you do?

A few stoplights later, there's 10 people at the corner. Three "Right", three "Left" and 4 blank. You stop, think, and motion one over and ask what's going on.

"We think you ought to go a different way."

Is this way blocked? And are you trying to point me in a direction that'll get me where I want to go?

"Oh, we don't know. We just asked a lot of people questions, and they think the way might be too hard, and want you to change course. We're not really worried about anything else, like whether you get where you need to be. And we can't guarantee we won't steer you wrong."

Great. Well, it could have been a silence of mimes, so a questioning of pollsters might not be so bad.

At least, not so bad until you start trying to figure out your course depending on their input. At that point, you might as well get out a weathervane and go whichever direction the wind blows.

President Clinton was poll-driven. He followed the course of least resistance, poll-wise. If something looked good in the polls, he did it. If something looked like it might drop his numbers, he avoided it. He actually had a particularly placid, uneventful presidency, with no hard choices being thrust upon him... so to speak... that required him to shift from being poll-driven when it came to issues facing the country.

President Bush... isn't. Actually, that's one of the things I like about him. He believes he knows what's best for the country. He believes that being President requires him to do the things he thinks are best for the country. And enough folks believed in him to elect him to a second term. (Of course, the spectacular show Kerry put on may have had something to do with that. I think Kerry didn't really want the job - I can't explain his self-sabotage any other way - but he's Kennedy's sock puppet and he had to run. And he'll try running again in 2008, unless Kennedy croaks first, in which case Kerry might well decide to retire from politics. Or he might not.... it's hard to tell. I still wouldn't vote for him, though...) I don't always agree with what he wants to do, but I see in him someone who really puts the good of the country ahead of the good of the party and is making decisions with access to a LOT more information than I have access to.

As far as trying to figure out which way our government should go from the polls...

Media polls are designed to gather information to fit the story they're trying to put out. That story isn't going to be even-handed, it isn't going to be unbiased. That story is going to be designed to get attention. If the poll results support the story, you know they'll be included. If not, the story will continue without th poll data. And you'll almost never see the wording of the poll questions, so you can judge whether it's on the order of "Given the choice between getting $10,000 or President Bush remaining in office, which would you rather have?" Say 59 out of 100 say they'd rather have the money - that question could legitimately be interpreted to say 59% would prefer Bush leave office. Hey, it's an honest interpretation of a badly designed question.

There are polls every 2, 4, and 6 years for the folks who nominally run our country. It's a pain to pay attention to the issues, it's a pain to try to get information from the MSM and figure out what direction their biases are polarizing it. The internet's a great source of information, but again you've got to apply some pretty stringent filters to what you find. It's also important to realize that not everything you're going to find on the internet is accurate, correct, or complete - and when it comes to politics the only thing you can do is gather as much information as possible from all sources and then figure out the quality of that information. And when you find something that looks true, verify it from as many sources as you can.

It's not an easy task being an informed voter. It's a lot harder than memorizing a few pithy slogans and chanting them until your ears ring. But when it comes time to give your opinion in the polls that count, you've got an obligation to get as much info as possible, then weigh it in light of the issues you believe are most important - and then vote accordingly.

That vote is the one poll that politicans really care about. All else is the spinning of a weathervane.

J.

7Online.com: 7online.com: News from WABC-TV

(New York-AP, Sept. 27, 2005) - It's an only in New York story. A woman was given a ticket for sitting on a park bench because she doesn't have children.
The Rivington Playground on Manhattan's East Side has a small sign at the entrance that says adults are prohibited unless they are accompanied by a child. Forty-seven-year-old Sandra Catena says she didn't see the sign when she sat down to wait for an arts festival to start. Two New York City police officers asked her if she was with a child. When she said no, they gave her a ticket that could bring a one thousand dollar fine and 90 days in jail.
The city parks department says the rule is designed to keep pedophiles out of city parks, but a parks spokesman told the Daily News that the department hoped police would use some common sense when enforcing the rule.
The spokesman told the paper that ticketing a woman in the park in the middle of the day is not the way you want to enforce the rule.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved

Light Captured In A Crystal: Science Fiction in the News

Light stopped for one second in the crystal shown below. A team of researchers from the Laser Physics Centre at the Australian National University in Canberra succeeded in setting the record for 'stopping' light, increasing the total time by a factor of 1,000.

J.

Maybe - maybe not.

Independent Online Edition > Business News : app5

Saudi Arabia, the biggest oil producer, and Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company, yesterday declared that the world had decades' worth of oil to come, in an attempt to calm fears about the record prices experienced in recent weeks.

Forming a powerful alliance, the Saudi oil minister Ali al-Naimi said, at an industry conference in Johannesburg, that the country would soon almost double its "proven" reserve base, while Exxon's president, Rex Tillerson, spoke of 3 trillion or more barrels of oil that are yet to be recovered.

J>

Serenity - The Movie - and - Serenity - The Cookbook

Civil War Food - HardTack

ShrinkWrapped has some interesting observations, especially on Political Correctness and how it fails Reality Testing.

Murdoc's laying down the LAW

The Captain thinks the Dems are about to make a severe mistake.

Powerline reports Subway Bomber wannabees arrested in France.

Well, piss. Those folks in Prague are taking text messaging to an extreme...

Enjoy!

J.

And apparently NASA's taken a look backwards.

USATODAY.com - NASA administrator says space shuttle was a mistake

The space shuttle and International Space Station — nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades — were mistakes, NASA chief Michael Griffin said Tuesday.

In a meeting with USA TODAY's editorial board, Griffin said NASA lost its way in the 1970s, when the agency ended the Apollo moon missions in favor of developing the shuttle and space station, which can only orbit Earth.

“It is now commonly accepted that was not the right path,” Griffin said. “We are now trying to change the path while doing as little damage as we can.”

Well, on the one hand, at least we've got a space station and the Shuttle. Might not be pretty, but it's better than nothing. And I fear if we hadn't had those programs, that's what we would have had.

J.

Roberts Confirmed by Senate

The Senate confirmed John Glover Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States, replacing the late William H. Rehnquist, the mentor for whom he clerked. The vote was 78-22.

J.

Gov. Blanco gets no Katrina questions?-?Nation/Politics?-?The Washington Times, America's Newspaper

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, blamed by the former leader of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin for many of the city's post-hurricane problems, was given no questions about her response to Hurricane Katrina when she appeared before a Senate committee to plead for more federal money.

She asked not to be questioned about it and the senators agreed.

Mrs. Blanco, a Democrat, was invited by the Senate Finance Committee to respond to charges by former FEMA Director Michael D. Brown, who the day before called Louisiana officials "dysfunctional" in handling the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

It amazes me sometimes, watching the politics in this country. It's starting to look like she's going to be given a pass on her responsibilities in this whole mess. So who do you think will be the fall guy? Compass, the police chief who just resigned? Nagin? Or do you think Brown's going to become the scapegoat?

J.

Yeah, I know. The Palestinians are perpetual victims of the evil Israelies, Jenin massacre, yada yada yada.

Personally, I think that there's never been a group that's been so screwed over by their leadership, short of the USSR - and even then if you scale it down I think that Arafat and the PLA come out on top there.

I've watched for years as time after time the Palestinians completely blew every peace offer and every chance for peace. Arafat himself walked out of peace negotiations that started with 95% of what HE ostensibly wanted, and was so upset by his having to walk out that the second intifada started. And how can we ever forget their heroic suicide bombing of a bus of kindergardeners? (Must have been midget army folk, right?)

And the the Israeli army forces an evacuation of the Gaza strip and turns it over intact to the Palestinians... who procede to loot and burn a lot of it, and then use it to launch missiles into Israel.

No, my sympathy meter's pegging to the left on the 'Palestinian' cause - and this little bit bent the needle even further.

The Second Draft

Pallywood, "According to Palestinian Sources..." a film by Richard Landes. International news media extract a few convincing instants of staged scenes - sight-bytes, and present them as news...

J.

PARAMETERS, US Army War College Quarterly - Spring 1998

Spotting the Losers: Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States

What are the signs, you ask?

Restrictions on the free flow of information. (gone)
The subjugation of women. (fighting against Islamic 'customs')
Inability to accept responsibility for individual or collective failure. (moving away from an "If God Wills It" fatalism)
The extended family or clan as the basic unit of social organization.
Domination by a restrictive religion. (The mullahs aren't being seen as the ultimate controllers of the society)
A low valuation of education. (Revamping the schools)
Low prestige assigned to work. (Economy ramping up)

J.

Let me preface this by stating that I think our country is best served by a two-party system. Three or more major parties, and you get wierdness like the '92 elections - where Perot drew off enough of the fiscally conservative electorate to insure a win for the Democrats. When the ideals of any two parties in a three-party system coincide, you could end up with enough of a crossover vote that the third party would win.

So, I think a two party system is best. However, what I've seen out of the Democratic party lately makes me think it's internally fragmented. You've got the hard-core left and the moderate left. As Jay Tea posted over at Wizbang -

What I'm trying to get at here is that one of the main drawbacks, as I see them, of the idealogues, the extremists, is the "all or nothing" mentality. They consider the notion of "the perfect is the enemy of the good" a heresy. They'd rather pass on the half a loaf and starve while fighting for the whole loaf.

And I think a lot of the memberhsip realizes that. Take a look at
Demoralized Dems - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com - it looks like a LOT of the Democrats realize they're out of airspeed and out of ideas - and their altitude is dropping fast. They don't have anyone in their party, or affiliated with their party with charisma enough to charm the undecided voters. Even the folks they hope could win are iffy at best.

The purported inevitability of Hillary Rodham Clinton excites some Democrats, but deeply depresses some others, both inside and outside the Beltway.

Her forcefulness and talent—not to mention her well-oiled money machine—bring respect from party insiders and outsiders alike. But there is an undercurrent of unease about the "Back to the Future" quality of another Clinton candidacy. Do we really want to relive the Clinton Years? Under their breath, even many Clinton acolytes tend to say “NO.”

Honestly? The Clinton years weren't bad, in the "Nothing Much Happened" way of things, and he was pretty much smart enough to keep from messing with stuff that seemed to be working. But Waco, OK City, and certain other events led me to think that when the shit hit the fan, he'd have not had a plan or a clue as to what to do next. Luckily, the shit didn't hit on his watch.

Out of ideas, airspeed, and altitude. What can the DNC do?

J.

BREITBART.COM - EU Wants Shared Control of Internet

The European Union insisted Friday that governments and the private sector must share the responsibility of overseeing the Internet, setting the stage for a showdown with the United States on the future of Internet governance.

A senior U.S. official reiterated Thursday that the country wants to remain the Internet's ultimate authority, rejecting calls in a United Nations meeting in Geneva for a U.N. body to take over. Is there any real reason why either the EU or the UN should manage the Internet?

Or is this just a case of them grabbing something they didn't build, looking to suck it dry and discard it later when it breaks?

J.

Out for the weekend - going to a Cub Scout campout. It should be ... interesting.

Catch you later!

J.