10 miles

I watched Katrina's eye pass east of downtown New Orleans this morning.

10 miles.

A track 10 miles west would have utterly destroyed the city.

The city seems to have taken a major, devastating blow however, with people trapped (why did you people not leave or go to the Superdome?!!) in their attics. In Hurricane Betsy, people drowned in their attics.

And there are no reports south and east of the city. It is likely places like Venice and Grand Isle no longer exist.

New Orleans

About a year and a half ago, for Spring Break, three friends and I drove down to New Orleans for Spring Break. It was, for some of us, our last spring break. Soon we'd be graduated (I took another year for medical and personal reasons) so we decided to have a blast.

We stayed at 1500 Canal Street and partied in the Quarter every night. We had bagettes at Cafe Au Lait right under the very levee that will probably fail sometime in the next 20 hours.

We wandered up and down the banks of the very river that will drown the city, and drove over the causeway that spans the lake that will too, drown one of America's most wonderful city.

We walked by the Superdome, now the last refuge for tens of thousands of New Orleanians.

Our way home was not so great, but some great people helped us out to get us home. To those great people we met, my prayers are with you. I hope to God you got out.

New Orleans is a special place...unique in this world. May God have mercy on her and her people.

Eyes (and Prayers) South


If anyone happens to be surfing and comes across this site from the New Orleans area or Mississippi Gulf Coast, just get out now. Katrina is a monster.

Live Feed.


-Most of the eastern third of the nation will experience some weather effects from Katrina.

-The economic effects could be staggering.

Eyes South

This is the most stunning discussion I've ever read from a NWS office.

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

...DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED...

.HURRICANE KATRINA...A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH...RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.

HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.

AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BEKILLED.

AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE CERTAIN WITHIN THE NEXT 12 TO 24 HOURS.

ONCE TROPICAL STORM AND HURRICANE FORCE WINDS ONSET...DO NOT VENTURE OUTSIDE!

This storm, assuming it hits at the strength it is at now, may test the ability of the American economy to absorb the costs. We may be asking for aid. Scary, unpreccidented thought.

Eyes South

The forecast, as of now, looks grim. This could be the storm that gives FEMA planners nightmares.


If the forecast verifies, New Orleans may not exist come midweek. The city is essentially a bowl that is sinking under its own weight, in addition to the encroachment of the Gulf and the fact that the Mississippi is ready to shift westward to a new mouth, but can't because the Army Corp has channelized it. I wrote a paper about this very scenario a year ago.

It should also be noted, that the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and Mississippi are covered with refineries. If the forecast verifies, expect a severe increase in prices over the next few weeks.

And...the atlantic is not done. Peak time for the Hurricane Season doesn't occur for another 12 days.


You can watch coverage of the evacuation of Southeast Louisiana here.

galactica

Battlestar Galactica remains the best show on TV, hands down.

BRAC

Pennsylvania will be losing Willow Grove near Philly, a blow to that region which lost the Navy Yard a decade and a half ago. Developers say the closed base will open up new industry.......but seeing the example of the Navy Yard (which to my knowledge is still sitting empty in some parts), I'm not getting my hopes up.

The 111 Fighter Wing may stay, but if the Pentegon gets its way, I have word that its mission will move to Boise, Idaho.

To my knowledge, with the loss of Willow Grove, there isn't a base like it between Dover and Cape Cod. Someone may need to correct that for me (and I think the base on Cape Cod--Otis, is on the list to be closed too.)

[sarcasm]wonderful[/sarcasm]

Looks like the domino theory of sweet sweet freedom has just created a new Islamic state. Like Iran.

Looks like $250 billion of well spent money.


I don't want to comment on this anymore. Here's a good site that does all that for me. I'm not being lazy, I'm just beyond jaded and cynical about this war right now. From the cheap seats from where I'm sitting, it looks like it was a waste and a shame that it now appears we sent all our men and women over there into the sandpit just to create another Iran. Goddamnit.

galactica

My favorite TV show has a blog. Take a peek.

If I ever get as whiny and thinskinned as LaShawn Barber, please smack me.

Unfortunately, she is among many of the Republican subset who have become quite thin-skinned over the last few years about their president, resorting to referring anyone who disagrees with them as traitors et cetera, et cetera. For some reason, I think getting picked on as a kid has pretty much made my skin thicker than leather. These guys must have been the bullies and the tide's been turned on them.

It amuses me that they call us shrill and lockstep, and non thinkers, et cetera. Yet their lockstep approach to their president makes me wonder if they really believe in their party's philosophy of individualism and personal responsibility. I mean I believe in those things. Sheesh.

At anyrate, enjoy Ms. Barber, who you can click to up above (until she blocks my site because she really is just so thin-skinned). A while back I read a hysterical site that someone set up just to make fun of her, and from what I hear she didn't like it. I found it funny.

billmon

Billmon's right.

Throw in the GOP's "culture of corruption," a cooling economy (with the housing bubble poised to unwind and the Fed raising rates, it isn't likely to get much better, anyway) and the normal historical pattern for second-term, mid-term elections, and next year might be an opportunity even the Dems can't kick away -- if, that is, they can work out a viable compromise between the "50-state" strategy of challenging the Republicans in every district (mission impossible) and an overly cautious focus on just a handful of "competitive" districts (business as usual).

On the other hand, given where things stand now, if the Dems don't do well next year, either Shrub and company will have pulled off a miracle in Iraq, the economy will have entered supply-side heaven, or we'll know for certain that we're effectively living in a one-party state.

2006 will mark 4 years of unified government, by the way, with all three branches of the Federal government being held by one party. 2006 represents one chance to return some diversity back to one of those branches.

I also feel it will probably be one of the few chances that we have to see if the rot I and many others sense is real.

intelligent design

I understand that America has this need to be not the best (even though we say we are, FUCK YEAH!). So I found the below cartoon to be particuarly hysterical. And Ironic.

funny

I haven't followed the crypto-fascist Justice Sunday movement (although I probably should) much. Rude Pundit has and is having fun with it.

(above link is not work safe.)

pooty poot

I wonder if Pooty-Poot will land his new supersonic bomber at an airfield in Chechnya and declare mission accomplished. With a nice fun banner.


(Articles chosen for extreme irony.)

stuff i like to do

One of the things I enjoy doing is Play-by-Email roleplaying.

For most of this year I have been quite involved in a science-fiction/history simulation of the 22nd Century, called Century 22. Each player serves as the government of a nation. I play Korea (reunified). Currently, Korea sits in an alliance with China, Vietnam, Japan and a regional federation called Southeast Asia, which is the combination of Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, the Phillipines and Thailand. Our world is quite multipolar---here's a semi-complete diagram of what this world looks like. Much different from real life.


Game turns cover five years of time. Turn One was the 2105-2109 time period. Currently we are on the eve of turn seven - or 2135-2139. so far, we have managed not to kill each other but there have been a number of police actions, notably in Somalia, Suriname, Burma, and one major civil conflict that featured the use of nuclear weapons in Indonesia.

Space exploration is a focus. Here's a map (generalized to keep it simple) of everything in range of humanity's starships - about a 30 to 35 lightyear sphere.

I won't say if there are aliens. That'd spoil it for anyone who might want to play.

It is a neat way to waste time (and the only "computer game" I can really play at work).

Don't be dumb like me


Hey gang, don't be dumb like me and buy a glass tank on Ebay. It of course, arrived with a crack in it. It's fairly easy to repair though, just a frustration. Getting to and from Lowes or Home Depot is going to be a pain too with this week being extremely busy.

On the positive side I finally have a project to do!


If I buy tanks online from now on (I want to turn my spare room into a fish room), I'm buying acrylic.

oops

Yeah. . . big oops.

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

There's more oops.

Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.

And this oops.

On security, the administration originally expected the U.S.-led coalition to be welcomed with rice and rosewater, traditional Arab greetings, with only a limited reaction from loyalists of ousted Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The surprising scope of the insurgency and influx of foreign fighters has forced Washington to repeatedly lower expectations -- about the time-frame for quelling the insurgency and creating an effective and cohesive Iraqi force capable of stepping in, U.S. officials said.

Killings of members of the Iraqi security force have tripled since January. Iraq's ministry of health estimates that bombings and other attacks have killed 4,000 civilians in Baghdad since Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari's interim government took office April 28.

Last week was the fourth-worst week of the whole war for U.S. military deaths in combat, and August already is the worst month for deaths of members of the National Guard and Reserve.

Attacks on U.S. convoys by insurgents using roadside bombs have doubled over the past year, Army Brig. Gen. Yves Fontaine said Friday. Convoys ferrying food, fuel, water, arms and equipment from Kuwait, Jordan and Turkey are attacked about 30 times a week, Fontaine said.

"There has been a realistic reassessment of what it is possible to achieve in the short term and fashion a partial exit strategy," Yaphe said. "This change is dictated not just by events on the ground but by unrealistic expectations at the start."

Talk about lowered expectations.

The United States had high hopes of quick, big-budget fixes for the electrical power system that would show Iraqis tangible benefits from the ouster of Hussein. But inadequate training for Iraqi staff, regional rivalries restricting the power flow to Baghdad, inadequate fuel for electrical generators and attacks on the infrastructure have contributed to the worst summer of electrical shortages in the capital.

Water is also a "tough, tough" situation in a desert country, said a U.S. official in Baghdad familiar with reconstruction issues. Pumping stations depend on electricity, and engineers now say the system has hundreds of thousands of leaks.

"The most thoroughly dashed expectation was the ability to build a robust self-sustaining economy. We're nowhere near that. State industries, electricity are all below what they were before we got there," said Wayne White, former head of the State Department's Iraq intelligence team who is now at the Middle East Institute. "The administration says Saddam ran down the country. But most damage was from looting [after the invasion], which took down state industries, large private manufacturing, the national electric" system.

Ironically, White said, the initial ambitions may have complicated the U.S. mission: "In order to get out earlier, expectations are going to have to be lower, even much lower. The higher your expectation, the longer you have to stay. Getting out is going to be a more important consideration than the original goals were. They were unrealistic."

Sounds like $250 billion well spent.

via Atrios, who was far harsher.

More commentary on the same article at Daily Kos.


It would be very wrong to say "I told you so." It would be much better to just come home now.

RELATED

A friend noted some weeks ago that we would not even have this Iranian wingnut in power if Bush hadn't gone and "lectured" the Iranian voters on how to vote. Never mess with another nations' soverignity. Remember the backlash that occured when the Brits attempted the same in our nation last November?

Now we've got hardliners in a state bordered by two (possibly three if you count Pakistan) near-Failed states. This must be that domino effect of freedom the neocons talked about.




It's going to be a nauseating news week folks. You can bet the farm on that.

Mrs. Sheehan

I've only been half following the story, but I believe that Mrs. Sheehan is doing a great thing down there in Texas. From a cursory reading of the blogs tonight, it seems those who are denigrating her are largely in-the-Beltway cowards who have never served.

disgusting

This is bloody disgusting.

Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents.

It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.

"I want you to know we support you," she gushed.

Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.

"Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told him.

I've read similar stories...where injured Iraq War veterans come home and go to college functions (since the overwhelming majority of them are in my age group) where groups like the College Republicans are meeting. The CRs can't even look the soldiers in the eye. If I find that article I'll post it.

But this makes me sick. Lipservice, fucking lip service. You know, my best friend in the world just re-enlisted in the air national guard. He's 41. Whether he supports this war or not I don't know. We've never discussed it. But if he can do it, then some punk ass rich bitch Republican suburbanite college kid who has a hard on and a wet dream for Bush can sign their punk asses up too.

Funny

This was a really funny article in the Patriot News this morning. I giggled. And it just goes to show that the pay raises were an incredibly stupid idea. Stupid. I mean mind-boggling stupid.

One suggested he walk a mile in their shoes and run for office. Another asked if McIntyre had ever supported a legislative pay raise. Still another sent a two-page letter explaining why he voted for the raise.

Then there was the reply from Democratic Senate leader Robert J. Mellow, D-Lackawanna: "Why don't you get a life? Please do not mail my office another e-mail."

The Patriot-News examined the e-mails on McIntyre's computer. While there was no way to verify the author of the messages, the "from" line in the messages read "Senator Robert Mellow" and carried his e-mail address.

Mellow did not return messages left with his Harrisburg and district offices.

I think everone should drop Senator Mellow an email. But I'm devilish.

Via Julia, we see a cause we all can get behind.

Phelps is coming to protest Sgt. Christopher Taylor's funeral Saturday. To these women, he was a soldier who fought for the rights of others.

"That's the worst part about it. This man just died for him to be able to go and do this," said Danielle Sanders, the wife of an Army Drill Sergeant.

Phelps is highly outspoken against homosexuality. He believes God is killing America's soldiers because "gays are taking over the country." However, one woman says a group in Michigan has already dealt with the protesting pastor.

"He protested their bar, and they decided instead of counter-acting and counter-protesting him with signs, they decided to do a fundraiser," said Melissa Yoannon, the local fundraiser coordinator.

All these ladies are asking for is a nickel, dime or quarter pledge per minute that Phelps protests Taylor's funeral.

Yoannon asked, "I thought if we could do this and get some money for Sgt. Taylor's wife, to make up for this man putting such a stain on the last peaceful moment she has with him, why not?"

"That's already enough of a burden on the family to have to deal with that, especially with the kids. Then have some guy sharing his views on something that has nothing to do with the family," said Sanders.

Yoannon has set up a phone number and e-mail address where you can send your pledge.

"They can just e-mail me their name, phone number and what they want to pledge. I'll get back to them and give them the information where they can send the money to."

She said it's the least they can do in this time of grief.

"If he wants to spill his hate, we'll spill our love and money."

If you wish to make a pledge, you can contact Yoannon at (706)366-0945. To e-mail your information, send it to sgt.taylorfund@hotmail.com.

If you wish to make a flat donation, you can do so by stopping by or sending it to any Charter Bank location. In Opelika, you can call (334)742-0266. The mailing address is:

Charter Bank
114 S. 7th Street
Opelika, AL 36801

Make your donation to the Sgt. Christopher Taylor Fund.

cool site

Hey this is a cool little site.

Keystone Politics.

found via Ross Notes