Disengaged?

Mark Steyn agrees with David Frum that Israel's recent Gaza disengagement had something to do with "[Sharon] calling the bluff of Western governments and the Arab states[.] By creating the very Palestinian state that those governments and those states pretend to want but actually dread Sharon is forcing them to end their pretense and acknowledge the truth."

I propose that the disengagement had more to do with nukes. "Israel "will not live under the threat of an Iranian nuclear bomb.": Washington Times

Israel is facing an imminent existential threat from Teheran. Palestinian statehood be damned - Hostilities with Iran and its axis is looming, given the likelihood that Israel won't blithely stand by as Iran assembles a nuclear arsenal. Iranians have talked openly about burning Tel Aviv. Nigh time to circle the wagons. Preemptively attacking Iran's facilities may mean being drawn into full war with Iran's scion Islamic Jihad (right next door) and who knows whom else.

Was the 'disengagement' about flipping the bird to Chirac and Hussein? Dunno. Perhaps the 'disengagement' was a tactical withdrawal of vulnerable Jewish elements from the line of fire. Israel will also need every ounce of credibility and good will it can muster from the US; not Europe, and definitely not Abbas. That's why the 'disengagement' is so critical at this juncture. Yankees may well need to come to Israel's aid with troops and materiel: An Administration that can point to unilateral good deeds and sacrifice from Jerusalem is more likely to deliver.

Unless, of course, Iran can be convinced that it's in its long term best interest to end its nuclear programme. Or... Israel simply stands down its guard.

David Dingwall's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Political cartoon courtesy Artizans Entertainment

... and we'll raid his fridge while he's off!

Dan, there's a twofour of stout in here!

People... While Damian is away, we mice will play. If you've a great link you'd like posted, send it to us at this address: daimnation@ranopt.net

Hearty thanks to Damian for his trust and generosity.

Cheers!

Preserved Killick (AKA Ran)

I'm gone, but my blog isn't

I'm taking yet another trip to Halifax to see Carla this weekend, and then I have to travel up the Northern Peninsula for some court appearances. So I likely won't be able to post again until Thursday at the earliest.

But this time, instead of letting the site lie fallow for a week, I've invited some friends, readers and bloggers to guest-post here while I'm gone. If Andrew Sullivan and InstaPundit can do it, why not me? See you next week.

Who misses the CBC?

Claire Hoy, who once co-hosted a Newsworld version of Crossfire with Judy Rebick, doesn't:

Heritage Minister Liza Frulla, a CBC cheerleader - and you thought the CBC had an “arm’s length relationship” with the government (hah!) – told a rally of about 500 locked out CBC workers from Toronto, Sudbury and Ottawa on Parliament Hill that cabinet ministers are definitely feeling the heat from the “public” to demand a negotiated end to the lockout.

As much as the elites want you to believe that we couldn’t survive as a country without this publicly-funded network, the one program which Canadians do watch in huge numbers is Hockey Night in Canada.

Personally, I find myself missing CBC Radio One, which features a lot of news programming (especially The World at Six, As it Happens and my local morning show) to which I listen quite often. But the lockout hasn't affected my TV viewing habits one bit.

15 of the 19

The Bush Administration's shameful, kid-gloves treatment of Saudi Arabia continues.

Week 4

Will I break the .500 mark this week? Here goes nuthin':

Buffalo at New Orleans
Denver at Jacksonville
Detroit at Tampa Bay - upset special. Joey Harrington knows his job depends on a decent performance in this one.
Houston at Cincinnati
Indianapolis at Tennessee
San Diego at New England - you don't bet against a dynasty.
Seattle at Washington
St. Louis at N.Y. Giants
N.Y. Jets at Baltimore - as a Bears fan, I can relate to a team losing its starting QB to injury every freakin' year.
Dallas at Oakland
Minnesota at Atlanta
Philadelphia at Kansas City
San Francisco at Arizona
Green Bay at Carolina

Laptops for the poor

This sounds pretty neat:

The world’s least sophisticated laptop computer was announced yesterday — and it runs by clockwork.

Nicholas Negroponte, chairman and co-founder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Labs, believes that his cheap learning aid will be virtually indestructible. The idea came to him after he visited Cambodia and saw the effect that donated computers had on children.
[...]
Professor Negroponte said that his computer’s retractable crank can be used to generate about ten minutes of power for every minute of winding.

Sponsors of the project include Google, the online search engine, which is working on software that can link several computers to the same central “brain”. Although $100 is a breakthrough price for a laptop, Professor Negroponte is aware that it will still be out of reach for some nations.

Roberts in, Hamm out

To no one's surprise, the U.S. Senate has confirmed John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. (The margin was 78-22, with the Democrats about evenly split.) In terms of qualifications and intelligence, I've seen nothing which suggests Roberts was anything less than an exemplary nominee. And from a purely political perspective, it's probably the smartest move Bush has ever made - Roberts' opponents had plenty of time to "Bork" him, but they had nothing but fearmongering and innuendo to go with. (Podcast blogger Charlie Quidnunc, by the way, did an excellent job covering this story.)

Meanwhile, Nova Scotia premier John Hamm has announced his retirement after six years in office. The Atlantic Provinces Trial Lawyers Association, of which I am a member, is shedding no tears for his departure, because of the $2,500.00 cap his government placed on general damages for so-called "minor" injuries. Aside from that, I thought he did a pretty good job. Just balancing Nova Scotia's books was quite an achievement, as was running a relatively clean government in a province notorious for political corruption, even by Atlantic Canadian standards.

While in office, Hamm presided over a scandal-free government that frequently boasted about its prudent fiscal management.

On Wednesday, the province posted a $165-million surplus for the 2004-2005 budget year.
[...]
With his departure, Hamm becomes the first Nova Scotia premier in a generation to leave office without a cloud of controversy hanging over his head or angry voters pressing for change.

Conservative John Buchanan was appointed to the Senate as scandal swamped his government. Liberal John Savage was ousted by his own party.

Dissent stifled

...at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania:

On August 29th, the Bucknell University Conservatives Club sent out a campus-wide e-mail announcing an upcoming speaker: Major John Krenson, who had been in Afghanistan "hunting terrorists." Those two words--"hunting terrorists"--resulted in three students being called to Bucknell's Office of the President by Kathy Owens, the Executive Assistant to the President.

Last year, while collecting footage for my upcoming film Indoctrinate U, I noticed that the campus was plastered with flyers that screamed "vagina" in large block letters. Although some people might find these flyers offensive, it is protected speech at Bucknell--as it should be--but apparently the phrase "hunting terrorists" is not.

Hunting terrorists, hunting terrorists, hunting terrorists, hunting terrorists. Am I being "offensive" now?

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Osama the asylum-seeker

In 1995, Osama bin Laden had his British followers look into whether he could move to the UK:

He claims to hate everything the West stands for. But yesterday it emerged that Osama bin Laden sought asylum in Britain even as he was planning the September 11 attacks on the US.

Michael Howard, who was then Home Secretary, recalls how his aides told him of the asylum request from the Saudi-born militant of whom the world knew little of ten years ago. A number of his brothers and other relatives, all members of the wealthy bin Laden construction empire, owned properties in London by the mid-1990s.
[...]
The astonishing approach to the British authorities happened only months after bin Laden had secretly organised a terror summit in Manila in January 1995 to begin planning how hijackers would turn passenger planes into flying bombs. He called it the “Bojinka plot”, which is Arabic slang for an explosion.

By this time bin Laden had also transferred some of his considerable personal fortune to London for his followers to establish terror cells here and across Europe.

This is my favorite part of the story:

The teenage bin Laden had reportedly toured Europe with his family and became an Arsenal fan, though there is no record of his ever having been to a match at Highbury. [emphasis added]

Power corrupts

Here in Canada, former Liberal MP David Dingwall has stepped down as president of the Royal Canadian Mint:

The man charged with minting Canada's pennies, dimes and loonies has resigned following accusations he was spending too much of that cash on lavish travel, fine dining and costly hospitality.

But the CTV interview ended when Dingwall was asked why — with his $277,000-a-year salary — he charged taxpayers $1.29 for a pack of gum. Dingwall, 53, first elected in 1980 to represent a Cape Breton riding, was defeated in the 1997 election. He then formed his own lobbyist firm before being appointed to the mint by outgoing prime minister Jean Chrétien in 2003.

And down in the States, as you've undoubtedly heard by now, Republican House Leader Tom DeLay has resigned his post following his indictment for alleged campaign financing offences:

Eyeing an opportunity to win back sorely missed congressional seats, Democrats will cast yesterday's indictment of a top Republican in the House of Representatives and the opening of a securities investigation into trading by the Republican majority leader of the Senate as symptoms of widespread corruption within a political party that controls the presidency and both houses of Congress.

A Texas grand jury yesterday indicted the Republican majority leader of the House, Rep. Thomas DeLay, of Texas, and two of his political associates on one count each of conspiracy to commit campaign finance fraud. Mr. DeLay, who had been under investigation for a year, declared his innocence at a press conference with reporters and described the indictment as a witch hunt orchestrated by his political enemies on the left.
[...]
It was the second time in a day that a leader of the Republican Party had been tarnished by a cloud of wrongdoing. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday opened a formal investigation into a stock sale by Senator Frist, of Tennessee, according to a Bloomberg News report. Dr. Frist, a potential candidate for president in 2008, sold shares in the hospital operating company founded by his father, HCA Incorporated, one month before a slide in the stock's value. He has not been formally accused of illegal trading.

The Liberals and the Republicans don't have much in common except for the fact that they've both held power for a very, very long time - the Liberals since 1993, and the GOP (in Congress, at least) since 1994. Sadly, no matter how lofty its intentions when it's first elected, almost every political party in every nation succumbs to the temptations of office after a decade or so in power.

You know I believe Canada is long overdue for a new government - and as long as they can keep the Dean/Kos moonbat wing under control, I'll be shedding few tears if the Democrats win back the House and/or Senate in 2006.

IFC shelved

The so-called "International Freedom Center" will not be built at the World Trade Center site after all:

In a story first reported by NY1, Governor George Pataki has cancelled plans to build the controversial International Freedom Center at the World Trade Center site - and representatives of the center say the location change has forced the entire project to be scrapped.

In a statement, Pataki said: “The creation of an institution that would show the world our unity and our resolve to preserve freedom in the wake of the horrific attacks is a noble pursuit. But freedom should unify us. This center has not.”

I have no problem, in principle, with a museum like the IFC. I just don't think Ground Zero, the site of a tragedy that shook America (and not just America) to its core, is the right place for it.

(Hat tip: Ranald Hay)

TSN.ca turns 10

The Canadian sports channel has set up a special site showing how TSN.ca has evolved over the years. It's really come a long way.

Big changes in Corner Brook

A comprehensive rundown of the Newfoundland municipal election results can be found here. Not surprisingly, Andy Wells was re-elected in St. John's by a 6-1 margin over Ray O'Neill. (As I noted yesterday, if even I would have voted for Wells, you know the election was going to be a blowout.)

Charles Pender, formerly a city councillor, won the mayoral race here in Corner Brook. Five of our six councillors will be new as well. If my snow clearing improves over the next term, I'll vote for all of 'em next time.

Update: Craig Welsh, Ed Hollett and Liam O'Brien have much more.

The SUV bubble bursts

Not surprisingly, expensive gas is making Americans trade in their large SUVs for more fuel-efficient vehicles. Equally unsurprisingly, the American automakers are stuck with lineups heavy on trucks and SUVs, and light on quality economy cars:

Nationally, Toyota Motor Corp. officials say the Corolla, one of the Japanese company's smallest and most fuel-efficient passenger cars, had 8.7 days' supply of inventory at the end of last week. In the industry, inventory of 50 to 60 days' supply is seen as adequate. Honda Motor Co. officials are struggling to keep up with demand for the Civic, of which there is nine days' supply. "Inventories are as low or lower than they've ever been for the Civic," said Sage Marie, a Honda spokesman. "They're basically being bought right off the truck."

For the Big Three, Healy said, investment followed profit margins. "As long as the SUV segment was doing well, they poured money into that and neglected small cars," Healy said. "At that time you could have made a very good case that it was giving the public what it wants."

Over the next couple of years, look for automakers to bring in smaller vehicles already available in Europe and Japan, like the Ford Fiesta, VW Polo, Toyota Yaris (already sold in Canada as the Echo hatchback) and Mitsubishi Colt.

Sheehan meets a "warmonger"

Some people say Cindy Sheehan's anti-war protests would have been defused had President Bush simply met with her in Crawford (never mind the fact, of course, that he did meet with her the year before). But after her meeting with John McCain, I think it's fair to say she would have deemed the meeting "unsatisfactory" and continued protesting:

Peace mom Cindy Sheehan didn't change her opposition to the war in Iraq after meeting Tuesday with one of its supporters, Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam veteran whom she called "a warmonger."

The two exchanged views about the war, and McCain described the conversation as "a rehash" of opinions already well known. He said he might not have met with Sheehan had he known none of his constituents was in the group.
[...]
"He is a warmonger, and I'm not," Sheehan said after meeting with McCain. "I believe this war is not keeping America safer."

"She's entitled to her opinion," McCain said. "We just have fundamental disagreements."

Nice work if you can get it

Former Liberal MP David Dingwall, now president of the Royal Canadian Mint, racked up office expenses of over $740,000.00 in 2004:

Included were over $130,000 in foreign and domestic travel, $14,000 in meals and $11,000 in hospitality. The mint also appears to have picked up a $1,400 tab for Dingwall's membership in an Ottawa-area golf club, and $1,500 in membership fees in the Nova Scotia barristers' society.

"It's kind of shocking," Pallister said in an interview Tuesday. "This is a continuation of an unfortunate trend among Liberal patronppointees to show relatively little respect for the people who pay their bills."
[...]
The total expenses of $747,000 for the president's office in 2004 include many items that are clearly routine and not tied directly to Dingwall.

The golf membership was at the posh Rivermead club, just across the Ottawa River in Aylmer, Que., a favourite hangout for the capital's political and business elite.

Where the Stasi agents went

To Germany's fourth-largest political party:

Germany's new Left party, which could play a crucial role in deciding the next chancellor, faced acute embarrassment yesterday amid claims that at least seven of its MPs had collaborated with the Stasi, the East German secret police.

The revelation came as the Left party held its first meeting as a parliamentary group after Sunday's inconclusive general election. It is made up of members from the Party of Democratic Socialism, the successor to East Germany's Communist party, and a new west German leftwing alliance, the Workers and Social Justice party. It won 8.7% of the vote, coming second in eastern Germany.

Stephenville under siege

As if that town didn't already have enough problems these days, a State of Emergency has been declared because of heavy flooding.

I just hope everyone wasn't moved into the local arena (called the "Stephenville Dome", even though it isn't, strictly speaking, a dome).

Update: photos here.

Don Adams's final gift to gag writers

It's usually unbecoming to make light of someone's death, but many bloggers have been unable to resist jokes, puns, parodies and plenty of Get Smart and Inspector Gadget references in their posts on the death of Don Adams. I think Adams would have liked it, actually:

- "KAOS Won"
- "Sorry about that, Chief"
- "The Cone of Silence has descended"
- "The eternal cone of silence"
- "We'll Miss Him By THAT Much"
- "Go Go Gadget Grave"
- "86 is 86'd"
- "The originator of KAOS theory"

(all links found via Technorati, where "Don Adams" is the ninth most-popular search query)

Who can predict this crazy game?

My record for Week 3 of the NFL season: 7-7. Sadly, that's my best week yet.

How can anyone know what's really going to happen, in a league in which the Panthers can beat last year's champion and subsequently lose to last year's worst team?

America's Jenin, continued

In Jenin, the media's anti-Israel prejudices led to reports of a "massacre" where none existed. In New Orleans three years later - perhaps from a combination of sensationalism, latent anti-Black racism and not-so-latent Bush-hatred - the media got it completely wrong again:

Maj. Ed Bush recalled how he stood in the bed of a pickup truck in the days after Hurricane Katrina, struggling to help the crowd outside the Louisiana Superdome separate fact from fiction. Armed only with a megaphone and scant information, he might have been shouting into, well, a hurricane.

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

Unfortunately, just as many people continue to insist that thousands of Palestinians were butchered at Jenin, the most outrageous reports from Hurricane Katrina - that the levees were deliberately blown up, that babies were raped and bodies stacked in freezers at the Superdome, that victims resorted to cannibalism - may never really die. Believing the worst, especially when it fits your political belief system, seems to be human nature.

(That goes for bloggers from all over the political spectrum, including myself, as well. With a few brave exceptions, we didn't approach the Katrina reports with the skepticism we dedicated to, say, the Bush/National Guard story.)

Update: speaking of the Bush/National Guard story, Mary Mapes is still deep, deep in denial.

Election day

Municipal elections across Newfoundland are being held today. There are four candidiates for mayor here in Corner Brook - one of them, Neville Greeley, is an acquaintance of mine, so that's who I'll be voting for.

Craig Welsh, who I knew a little back in my university days, has a pretty good summary of the St. John's election. If I were still living back there, I'd probably have no choice but to hold my nose and vote to re-elect legendary asshole Andy Wells for mayor - partly because the city is doing pretty well these days, and partly because his only competitor, Ray O'Neill, is insane. Literally:

...I do wish I was back in town covering the St. John's City Council election. Because there is nothing more fun than an election when you're a journalist. And municipal elections tend to be the most fun of all because, as Rick Mercer once wisely pointed out, anyone who runs for town council is normally a bit touched in the head.

I mean that stuff with Ray O'Neill vandalizing the campaign posters of Doc O'Keefe? Priceless. Especially since:
A. He got caught. No one gets caught vandalizing campaign posters.
B. He's not running against O'Keefe
C. He spelt "liar" wrong.

Quote of the Day

Christopher Hitchens on this past weekend's "anti-war" protests:

Was there a single placard saying, "No to Jihad"? Of course not. Or a single placard saying, "Yes to Kurdish self-determination" or "We support Afghan women's struggle"? Don't make me laugh.

The 9/11 conspirozoids go to Washington

The Congressional Black Caucus hosted a panel featuring some of the more prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorists at its annual conference last week. No prizes for guessing who moderated it:

The terms "brain trust" and "Cynthia McKinney" do not roll off the tongue like "peanut butter and jelly." But that's how the press release advertised a series of "Brain Trust" panels moderated by Rep. McKinney this past weekend at the Congressional Black Caucus's annual legislative conference. The topic: "The 9/11 Omission: Did the Commission Get it Wrong?"

For the September 23rd meeting at the Washington Convention Center, McKinney assembled three teams of panelists to tackle issues related to "The Road to 9/11," "The Road Since 9/11," and "What the Commissioners Chose to Ignore." After each panelist addressed the 50 or 60 members of the audience, they were questioned by three experts from the "9/11 community," a group dedicated to exposing the government's malfeasance in regards to the terrorist attacks.
[...]
Wayne Madsen, author of the Wayne Madsen Report, was one of three questioners of the panelists. His hatred of all things George W. Bush, and love of all things conspiratorial, almost rises to self-parody. In a November, 2002 article in CounterPunch, a progressive newsletter, he had this convoluted analysis of Karl Rove's role in McKinney's reelection campaign:

The panelists were of a similar bent. One of the featured speakers was David Ray Griffin. He spent his allotted time informing the audience that the Twin Towers collapsed not because two planes loaded down with jet fuel smashed into them at hundreds of miles per hour. Rather, a series of timed detonations brought down the buildings. Detonations placed by the government. "Hmm," the crowd murmured knowingly.

Ward Churchill showed up, too.

It never ceases to amaze me, how America's eeeeeevil fascist Jew...er, Zionist-dominated government supposedly stifles all dissent but somehow can't prevent those who know the truth from speaking out through conferences, videos and countless websites. Only one logical conclusion can be drawn: McKinney, Ruppert and Griffin are actually government-sponsored disinformation specialists, programmed to throw independent thinkers off the trail of those who really run everything. (Namely, the Lizard Men.)

Agent 86, R.I.P.

Don Adams, star of Get Smart - a show that holds up astonishingly well over 30 years after it aired - has passed away at age 82.

A theatrical remake of Get Smart is set for release in 2006, starring Steve Carrell as Maxwell Smart. Carrell is a great comic actor - he's terrific in the U.S. version of The Office, a show that has improved considerably since its debut - but it's almost impossible to imagine anyone but Adams in the role.

TV Guide

- If the ratings are any indication, not many of you listened to my demand that you watch Arrested Development last Monday. You have another chance tonight. If you don't, I'm grounding you.

- last night's Simpsons wasn't the proverbial Worst Episode Ever, but you know things are getting pretty bad when Ralph Wiggum has been reduced to making poop jokes, and they're using pretty much the same plot - Homer and Marge separate - two weeks in a row. Is anyone else, like me, just watching this show out of pure habit right now? (Milhouse's dad did have one great line: "unlike the breakup, this is not your fault.")

- Jim Tracher noticed some important clues in the Lost season premiere:

Hello, fellow Lost nerds. So Desmond, the dude in That '70s Bunker, was doing a crazy painting on the wall with the number 108 several times...

Number of seconds I spent writing this: 108

They get a little embarassed when this happens, right?

A revealing moment at an "anti-war" rally in San Diego:

JAMAL KANJ, a fiery Palestinian from a group called Al-Awda, takes the podium. “We Palestinians,” he begins, “have been subjected to GENOCIDE at the hands of the Israelis for generations." He rants on. "In 1948, they forced us out of our homes, and today we must DRIVE THE JEWS FROM PALESTINE!”

This proved to be too much even for some of the other protestors. Meanwhile, LGF has a photo gallery from the L.A. march. ("Cure War, Go Vegan")

New developments in the most important story on earth

Ashton and Demi finally got married.

Hey, if they really love each other, more power to them. (As more than one commentator has pointed out, no one would bat an eye if he was 42 and she was 27.)

Revolt from within

I just read a blog post titled "Can anybody tell me why the GOP should be in charge?" which partly reads as follows:

[Columns] expose a Republican Party - at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue - that has cast aside principles in an effort to buy votes. At some point, conservatives probably will realize that the long-term interests of the nation are best served by a GOP defeat. Can anyone suggest another approach to cleanse the ideological corruption that infests the Republican Party?

A pop quiz: which blog featured this post?

A) Daily Kos
B) Atrios
C) Andrew Sullivan
D) Townhall.com's "C-Log"

Answer here.

America's Jenin

Officials in New Orleans expected to find hundreds of bodies at the Superdome and Convention Center. They found ten, making this one of the least successful examples of ethnic cleansing in history:

After five days managing near-riots, medical horrors and unspeakable living conditions inside the Superdome, Louisiana National Guard Col. Thomas Beron prepared to hand over the dead to representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

At the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, just four bodies were recovered, despites reports of corpses piled inside the building. Only one of the dead appeared to have been slain, said health and law enforcement officials.

The media, and many commentators, were prepared to believe the worst about the people holed up at the Superdome - partly because it would sell newspapers, and partly because it would give them more dead bodies to lay at the feet of the evil Dubya. As word gets out that the worst horror stories were exagerrated rumours, just watch as the same people say they were promoted by racist conservatives trying to make black people look bad.

Worse than Adscam?

That's what Peter MacKay saying about the gun registry:

Critics of the gun registry are eagerly awaiting Auditor General Sheila Fraser's "Canadian Firearms Program" audit which is scheduled to be released in February -- if we're not in the midst of a federal election campaign.

"It will be like dime-store shoplifting when one starts to compare the money that was involved in this gun registry that's unaccounted for," MacKay told Sun Media.

My problem with the firearms registry is not so much about philosophical objections to gun control or registration, but about a simple analysis of what we've been getting for our money. With the untold millions of dollars spent on gun registration, how many police officers could have been hired, how many more prisons could have been built, and how many more improvements could have been made to an overburdened court system? And what would have done more to reduce violent crime?

Experts debate global warming

Prof. Streisand says more and more people (who need people, presumably) are going to die from global-warming-enhanced hurricanes:

This summer's back to back superstorms are proof positive we have entered a new period of "global warming emergency," artist/citizen Barbra Streisand warns.

"We are in a global warming emergency state, and these storms are going to become more frequent, more intense," Streisand urgently declares.
[...]
Up next on the weather warning watch, Streisand says to ABC: "There could be more droughts, dust bowls. You know, it's amazing to hear these facts."

Other (less famous) professors disagree:

Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, told a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday that we're in a period of heightened hurricane activity that could last another decade or two.

Landsea said the studies indicate global warming could increase hurricane wind speeds and rainfall by about 5 percent --100 years from now. But, he added, more study is needed, looking back at historical data and making it more compatible with modern reporting techniques.
[...]
[Colorado State University's William Gray] first sounded the alarm in 1995, noting that the surface waters in the north Atlantic Ocean had warmed slightly. 1995 saw 11 hurricanes and eight tropical storms, the highest tally since 1933.

"This cycle has been repeating back to the Ice Age," Willoughby said. "It's related to changes in the ocean currents that move heat northward. If it's fast, we get a lot of hurricanes."

Well, the wheels came off that bandwagon pretty quickly

With ten minutes left in the third quarter, Kyle Orton just threw his fifth interception. (That the Bengals are only leading 10-0 is a testament to the Bears' outstanding defence.)

Update: final score: Bengals 24, Bears 7. The Bengals became the first team in 34 years to pick up 5 interceptions in consecutive games.

Cincinnati is notorious for first-round draft picks that don't work out, but Carson Palmer is looking like the real thing. And for what he's done with this perenially dysfunctional franchise, Marvin Lewis has to be considered the best coach in the NFL. Mark Oct. 23 on your calendar: that's when the Bengals take on the Steelers (who lost to New England on yet another Adam Vinateri last-second field goal today).

After 1,813 days, a new champion

I always figured Kimi Raikkonen would be driver to finally dethrone Michael Schumacher as F1 champion, or maybe Juan Pablo Montoya. Or possibly Jenson Button, or even the inconsistent but very quick Felipe Massa. But Fernando Alonso? A good driver, to be sure, but I certainly didn't think he'd win the title before the likes of Raikonnen.

Which shows you I'm not much better at making F1 predictions than I am at predicting the outcome of NFL games. With a third-place finish (behind Montoya and Raikonnen) at Interlagos this afternoon, Alonso clinched the championship Schumacher had held, according to the Speed Channel commentators, for 1,813 days.

Spain has produced some great rally and motorcycle racers, but no F1 champion until Alonso - also the youngest champ ever - came along. Schumacher is the greatest driver of all time, but it's about time somebody beat him. (In fact, after Montoya's win today, Schuey is now fourth in the standings with two races left.)

Why does GM give up so easily?

I want to get at least another winter out of my snow tires, so I'm not planning to trade in my car until next spring at the earliest. But I did take a Chevy Cobalt for a test drive yesterday, and you know what? It's not bad - a lot better than I was expecting, actually. There's more than adequate power (140 hp), the 5-speed transmission feels nice, and there's plenty of room. Best of all are the handling and steering, which are remarkably good for a GM compact car. Yes, the ride is jittery, but you don't expect a smooth ride in an economy car, and I'd gladly give up ride quality for better handling.

So, when the time comes to trade in my Mazda, will I be buying the Chevrolet? Probably not, because compared with the Mazda 3 or Honda Civic, it's so easy to see where GM cut corners. The interior quality is shockingly bad - the dashboard is made of absolutely hideous hard plastic, the shift knob looks and feels like a child's rubber ball, and the seats, though supportive, are covered with cheap, slippery fabric. It simply doesn't feel like a nice place to spend a long drive, especially compared with the new Mazda. Even the Korean-built Chevy Optra5 (sold as the Lacetti in Britain and the Suzuki Reno in the States) has a more pleasant interior.

The frustrating thing about the Cobalt is that it could have been a truly great small car had GM put just a little more effort into designing the interior, but in the end you can tell that some accountant decided it was more important to save fifty bucks per car, since the rubes will never know the difference anyway. Whereas Honda, Mazda and Toyota believe the person who buys a good small car today will buy one of their larger cars or SUVs in a few years, GM seems to put out its small cars as afterthoughts for people who can't be convinced to buy TrailBlazers. I'm sure they'll improve the car with time, but by then it will be too late.

It shouldn't be too hard, guys. Just buy a fleet of Japanese small cars, take them apart and either buy your materials from the same suppliers, or get your suppliers to make them to the same specifications. "Good enough" isn't good enough.

30 days of corruption

Blogger Toronto Tory says he's going to "post an example of a company or individual who has an unethical relationship with Paul Martin, and/or the Liberal party of Canada/Ontario" every day for the next month.

I don't think he's going to be short of material.

No excuses

A member of the so-called "Jewish Defence League" just got twenty years for his part in a failed bombing plot against a mosque and a Lebanese-American Congressman. As a contributor at Harry's Place notes, the ADL has issued a full, unconditional condemnation - no weasel words about opposing terrorism against "innocent people", wink wink - and no mainstream Jewish groups or pro-Israel bloggers are coming forward to defend or make excuses for the guy.

Imagine that!

Live from Hurricane Rita

Laurence Simon has stayed in Houston (which, thankfully, has been spared a direct hit) and is live-blogging the storm.

Just before Rita struck, but after it had been downgraded, Simon ran into someone who said the massive evacuation was a hoax so the Bush Administration could sell more gas. Hurricanes can destroy entire cities, but they can't blow away moonbattery.

Week 3

This time around, I'm not letting any coin make a fool out of me. No way.

Cincinnati at Chicago - but if Da Bears can shut down the league's hottest offence - yes, the Bengals have the league's hottest offence - we may as well give them the NFC North right now.
Atlanta at Buffalo - upset special, mainly because of Vick's injuries.
Cleveland at Indianapolis
Tampa Bay at Green Bay
Jacksonville at NY Jets
Oakland at Philadelphia
Tennessee at St. Louis
Carolina at Miami
New Orleans at Minnesota - the Vikes' problems go a lot deeper than the absence of Randy Moss.
Arizona at Seattle - upset special #2. You wouldn't know it from the Cards' 0-2 record, but Kurt Warner ranks 4th in passing yardage so far this season.
Dallas at San Francisco
New England at Pittsburgh - will we see the mighty Patriots lose two in a row? I think we will.
NY Giants at San Diego - I don't believe the Giants are really that good, nor that the Chargers are really that bad.
Kansas City at Denver

Control Stewie before he controls you

Hours of fun. (Well, minutes of fun, anyway)

What would Jesus do?

Probably not this:

A 14-year-old student was expelled from a Christian school because her parents are lesbians, the school's superintendent said in a letter.

Shay Clark was expelled from Ontario Christian School on Thursday.

"Your family does not meet the policies of admission," Superintendent Leonard Stob wrote to Tina Clark, the girl's biological mother.

Stob wrote that school policy requires that at least one parent may not engage in practices "immoral or inconsistent with a positive Christian life style, such as cohabitating without marriage or in a homosexual relationship," The Los Angeles Times reported in Friday's edition.

Stob could not be reached for comment by the newspaper. Shay and her parents said they won't fight the ruling. (emphasis added)

Les Gangstas Francaises

In America, radical rappers and punk bands at least pay lip service to supporting freedom of expression, even though most of them would have people like me lined up against the wall and shot in the unlikely event they ever took power. So I'll give the French rap group "Sniper" some credit - they're honest enough to admit they don't believe in freedom of expression:

During the mid-1990s, rap entered the mainstream of French popular culture. Since then, some of the most successful groups in French pop music have been rap bands made up mostly of French citizens of Arab or African descent. Among the most popular is NTM (which stands for Nique ta mère, "F--your mother"), a Sony Records group. NTM is famous for lyrics which attack France and especially the police. During a concert in 1995, NTM sang: "I f--the police, I sodomize and pee on the law! Our enemies are the men in blue" (French cops wear blue uniforms). This outburst earned NTM members a three-month prison sentence, later commuted to a fine (though NTM member Joey Starr has been in and out of prison for 15 years for drugs, assault, weapons charges, domestic-abuse, and for spitting on police).

The video borders on pornography. It shows violent acts supposedly committed by the French Army. France is represented by two naked white women called "Gauloises" (a reference to the ancient inhabitants of France) who perform lewd acts with the French flag while a group of blacks make an obscene gesture. As a disclaimer Mr. R says, "When I speak of France, I don't mean the French people but their leaders. They've been exploiting us for a long time, from slavery to colonization, and they're still jerking us around." Tellingly, in the last words of the song, "France" is replaced by "Europe": "Europe is a bitch, don't forget to f--her to exhaustion. You have to treat her like a whore, man!"--which suggests that the rapper's grievances extend past France to include much of the West. [emphasis added]

The French love American "dissidents" like Mumia Abu-Jamal and Noam Chomsky, so it's tempting to snicker at the likes of "Mr. R" giving them a taste of their own medicine. But in the end, if it comes down to a choice between a liberal democracy - a hypocritical, occasionally infurating democracy, but a democracy nonetheless - and a mob of Marxist, Islamofascist and nihilist thugs, there's no doubt about which side I'll be on.

Another symbol of a failed revolution

So, what nation has the highest rate of opiate addicts on earth? The United States, with its blighted inner-city ghettos? Holland, where drug use is tolerated? Guess again:

According to the U.N. World Drug Report for 2005, Iran has the highest proportion of opiate addicts in the world -- 2.8 percent of the population over age 15. Only two other countries -- Mauritius and Kyrgyzstan -- pass the 2 percent mark. With a population of about 70 million and some government agencies putting the number of regular users close to 4 million, Iran has no real competition as world leader in per capita addiction to opiates, including heroin.

When an earthquake leveled the city of Bam in 2003, among the emergency supplies rushed to the scene were doses of methadone, a synthetic drug used to treat heroin and morphine addicts, for the 20 percent or more of the population believed to be addicted. So many Iranians rely on opiates that an influential government analyst suggests the state itself should consider cultivating poppies.
[...]
For many young people in Iran, one reality of everyday life is powerful boredom. Though rules enforcing Muslim dress have been relaxed in the past three years, there is little to do, even in a city of about 10 million. The stillness of a Tehran street on a weekend day is almost sepulchral.

Bahman Akbarizadeh, 25, wore a gray shirt and an intense look. "I think if people had hope and entertainment in their life, they would never go to heroin, because they know the risks."

The youth of Iran are fed up - and the country's population is getting younger and younger every year. Eventually, something has to give.

Meow!

Jenny, from idontlikeyouinthatway.com, on Cameron Diaz complaining about photographers at a press conference:

She was a press conference, for chrissakes. Did she think the press would leave the cameras at home and draw caricatures or mold her likeness out of play dough instead? Cameron is one of the most punchable celebrities in Hollywood. She's an overpaid, overrated, lacklustre actress who is completely average in practically every way. And when her face isn't shellacked with foundation, it looks like the surface of the moon.

Explosion in Texas

Breaking news: a bus carrying evacuees from Hurricane Rita exploded, killing at least one person.

Almost no details yet.

Update: MSNBC says a mechanical problem started the fire, and the explosion was caused by an elderly patient's oxygen tank. Several passengers were saved by the bus driver, but up to 20 people may have been killed.

Spot the difference

A classic example of how you can subtly spin the same story very differently: first, here's The Daily Telegraph on Sept. 12...

Tony Blair decided to wage war on Iraq after coming under the influence of a "sinister" group of Jews and Freemasons, a Muslim barrister who advises the Prime Minister has claimed.

Ahmad Thomson, from the Association of Muslim Lawyers, said Mr Blair was the latest in a long line of politicians to have been influenced by the group which saw the attack on Saddam Hussein as a way to control the Middle East.

And here's how a news site called Islam Online reported the same story...

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair decided to invade Iraq after coming under pressure from a "sinister" group of Jews and Freemasons, the Daily Telegraph reported, citing Ahmad Thomson, one of Blair's advisers.

Gas panic

Even before Hurricane Rita struck Texas, drivers flocked to gas stations all over the country to fill up before rumoured price increases took place:

Police were called to keep order as frantic motorists, spurred by rumours of $2-a-litre gas, jammed gas stations across the province yesterday.

Spooked by the price increases that followed Hurricane Katrina and the damage it caused to oil production and refining facilities in the Gulf of Mexico and Louisiana, Ontario motorists yesterday weren't taking any chances and filling up with "cheap" gas while they could.

Even here in Newfoundland, where prices are regulated, the gas stations were absolutely blocked last night. I had been hearing rumours all day about prices skyrocketing at midnight, so I found a relatively quiet station and filled up too. It's something I'd have to buy eventually anyway, and even though I knew the price in this province couldn't go up without a day's notice, I figured I had little to lose by getting it while the getting was good. ("Good" in this case being 115.3 cents per litre.)

Gas prices have that effect on people. A two-cent difference per litre will make less than a dollar's difference on the average fill-up, but nearly all of us will go out of our way to buy slightly cheaper gas anyway. When you see the price rising or falling twenty-five or thirty cents at a time, well, that's enough to make any driver go crazy.

Terror arrest in Manchester

Something big is happening at the airport in Manchester, England:

A man has been arrested under terror laws in a dramatic incident at Manchester Airport.

It is understood the arrested man is of Asian appearance and the suspect package involved was a black briefcase or suitcase.

There aren't many more details at this time. (Inexplicably, the BBC News website still has nothing at all about the arrest.) I guess we'll find out later today whether a attack was really stopped, or whether this was a false alarm.

"We hate our country! Vote for us!"

I think this may explain why Australia's Labor Party keeps losing. (Well, that and the fact that their last leader was completely friggin' insane, as Tim Blair's readers will know.)

One in five Labor Party candidates at the last federal election believed the United States was a threat to Australian security, a new study has showed.

Thirty-one per cent of ALP candidates said they had little or no trust in the US coming to Australia's defence, and one in five said they were either not very proud, or not at all proud, to be Australian. [emphasis added]

China's controlled internet

This Christian Science Monitor story on Chinese internet censorship is disturbing for many reasons, not the least of which is that the Chinese internet "model" may be spreading to other countries:

As China began to go online, observers made brash predictions that the Internet would pry the country open. Cyberspace, the thinking went, would prove too vast and wild for Beijing to keep under its thumb.

As Chinese Web companies seek to enlarge their markets particularly in developing countries, the question looms about whether they will export their values as well. Chinese tech firms have an eye on emerging markets in Africa, South America, and India. These firms are probably peddling censorship tools, says the free-speech advocacy group Reporters Without Borders.

You know some Western politicians - social conservatives and politically correct leftists - are looking at China and thinking, "if they can control the internet, why can't we?"

The art of demagoguery

George Galloway's American tour included an appearance on conspiracy whackjob Alex Jones' radio show, and it's really quite enlightening to see what Gorgeous George has to say when he thinks only like-minded lunatics are listening:

Previously Mr Galloway has suggested that there is a very real danger of the government engineering a situation where terror attacks can be manufactured and seized upon to forward the pre-planned agenda abroad and at home. On Friday Mr Galloway elaborated on these comments:

"Suddenly Jewish people who had been the victims of Christian persecution suddenly saw their Synagogues being blown up, their countries being attacked and all kinds of provocations being staged so packed their bags and moved to occupied Palestine, then to be called Israel."

This is how fascist movements get started, folks.

(Via Harry's Place)

From House of God to House of Hate

Hamas is turning an abandoned synagogue into a "weapons museum":

Emboldened by Israel's withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, Hamas yesterday announced its plan to turn a synagogue in Netzarim into a museum that would display weapons employed by the terrorist group's members against Israeli civilians.

A statement issued yesterday by Hamas said, "Qassam rockets and other locally made arms will be exposed, since it is the legal weapon that evicted the occupation forces." The Middle East Media Research Institute yesterday reported that recent sermons delivered by Hamas leaders pledged to resist efforts from the Palestinian Authority to disarm the organization ahead of upcoming elections.

They always find a way. Just when you think they can't sink any lower, they find a way.

Wow. She's serious

I was willing to give Cindy Sheehan the benefit of the doubt about her infamous reference to "occupied New Orleans" - I assumed she was referring to Afghanistan or something, and she just got her words mixed up - but it looks like she really means it:

Her protest has moved beyond the Iraq war. In fact, she may be the only American housewife with both an RV and her own domestic policy. She even wants U.S. troops withdrawn from "occupied" New Orleans, where they are on duty for rescue work and restoration of order.

"I was in New Orleans," she told a few straggler reporters before heading back to the RV and later to the White House gate to deliver a letter to Mr. Bush. "There were tanks and military vehicles and patrols. And they had their guns out. It was a little frightening."

The old "we don't have enough troops to help New Orleans because they're all in Iraq" argument certainly vanished quickly, didn't it?

Oh, that Liberal media

Stephen Taylor fact-checks a new smear campaign - eagerly promoted by CTV and the Globe and Mail - against Stephen Harper.

It's a ronery rife

Behold the immortal words of J. Nelson Kwango of Cameroon, movie critic, Juche enthusiast, and all-around bastard person:

Comrades!
I am terrored! A film has just arrived on the markets of Cameroon, this film the American Police Team or some name that is similar. My nephew, purchased this and asked me to watch because he said is had something to do with DPRK. The shock I see! The general, beloved general, Kim Jong Il is a puppet character in this film and speaking the most offending things! He swears in English, kills his interpreter, and turns into a small insect at the end. They make the Dear Leader to be evil man, and lonely man. They find risible the undying love of the Korean people? They think the leadership of DPRK and the revolution is a joke? Forgive me for saying but makers of this film are bastard people! I denounce them and curse them! Bastard people!
Can we not complain to someone about such slander? Why has not the KCNA denounced this piece of capitalist propaganda? To think that they make light of the general and debase his greatness!

(via Samizdata)

Update: a commenter thinks this is a gag, and it probably is. But the message board on which it appeared is real, and some of the follow-up comments certainly look sincere. ("Kim Jong Il is really NOT a ronery man, he´s the father of the whole korean nation!!!" You can probably tell which word I changed.)

Mick Hartley has more on DPRK enthusiasts in Britain.

And all this time, I thought the Israelis were behind it

A Pocatello, Idaho meterologist believes Japan's Yakuza mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina to avenge the Hiroshima atomic bomb attack, and will use it again on another U.S. city.

Veteran KPVI-TV weatherman, Scott Stevens, says he discovered the theory on the Internet in 1998. He details it on his own site at www.weatherwars.info.

Evacuations compared

Ouch.

(Via Laurence Simon. Good luck and best wishes to Laurence and everyone else in the path of Hurricane Rita.)

The dark side of Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a Godsend, but stories like this are the reason I don't use it as a definitive source:

An Australian Jewish group has been angered by the use of an online encyclopedia to attack the memory of Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who died yesterday.

The Wikipedia website, a collection of articles that can be freely edited by users, displayed false information about Mr Wiesenthal, claiming he partook in various sex acts in Austria with other men.

"In the 1970's he became involved in gay life when he began spending his free time giving oral sex to older black men", the site read in part this morning. It continued on for several paragraphs.

The obscene paragraphs have been removed from Wiesenthal's entry.

When Politicians Attack

Gerhard Schroeder isn't taking defeat well:

A belligerent performance by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in a TV talk show after German elections, which his party narrowly lost, has drawn widespread criticism and fuelled alarm the country could be lurching into a political crisis.

Despite coming in behind conservative challenger Angela Merkel, the Chancellor - in an interview with all leading candidates after Sunday's elections - insisted he had won and should remain German leader.
[...]
A grinning Schroeder first accused the TV moderators of having "an intellectual problem" and not being objective in their reporting and questioning.

Most newspapers said Schroeder had "run riot" during the half-hour TV show dubbed "the elephant round". The Berliner Zeitung, which generally backs the Chancellor, called it "a bizarre appearance".

No word on whether Schroeder used the phrase "you're stuck on stupid!" during the debate.

(via LGF)

The BBC picks a cabinet

The Beeb is running an online survey in which people can select an 11-member "committee" of famous people to run the world. As Bob Tarantino notes, the BBC's political leanings are evident in the 100-person short-list - insane people can pick Noam Chomsky, Eric Hobsbawm and Tariq Ramadan, but if you want Richard Pipes, Milton Friedman or Bernard Lewis, you're outta luck.

Still, I'll play. My first ten picks were relatively easy: Somali-born anti-Islamofascist Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi; economists Amartya Sen and Hernando de Soto; the father of Czech democracy, Vaclav Havel; Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan; Rupert Murdoch, Paul Wolfowitz and Condoleeza Rice, in no small part because their appointments would tick off just the right people; and Freakonomics co-author Steven Levitt. I had a harder time choosing the eleventh spot out of the remaining nominees - where are Lech Walesa, John Howard, Natan Sharansky or Margaret Thatcher? - but in the end I went with Salman Rushdie, who probably more than anyone about Islamic extremism and the threat it poses to freedom of expression.

Update: spelling errors corrected. (It's "Hobsbawm" and "Walesa", not "Howbsbawm" and "Walensa".)

The next great blogosphere catchphrase

"You are stuck on stupid." It works for so many social situations!

And here's a pretty good example of someone at FEMA being stuck on stupid:

...the truck drivers NEWSCENTER spoke to said they went all the way down to the gulf coast with the ice -- stayed for a few days -- and then were told by FEMA they needed to drive to Maine to store it.

They started arriving over the weekend, and city spokesperson Peter Dewitt says as many as 200 trucks could come to the city by the end of the week. (via Sully)

The crazy world of the Castro groupie

Tex picked up the Usenet rock and found another classic specimen underneath.

Anglican Appeasement

Midwest Conservative Journal and Melanie Phillips have more on the Church of England's dhimmitude and moral bankruptcy. Here's Phillips:

...they are comparing the removal of Saddam Hussein with the persecution of the Jews, the axis against democracy in World War Two and South African apartheid. But it was Saddam Hussein, the butcher of his own people and sponsor of terrorist murder against Israel and America who was the brother in blood to the tyrants of history. To compare these evils with the attempt to remove a similar modern evil is a straightforward inversion of good and evil. One associates such anti-reasoning with moral imbeciles – but the church?
[...]
Christianity is currently at the hideous receiving end of the global jihad, with countless millions of Christians being persecuted and massacred around the world and their churches burned to the ground. Yet the response of these bishops is to genuflect before terror, to apologise for the attempt to defeat it, to abase themselves and offer up their faith – and their country – to barbarism.

Who can ever take such a church seriously when its bishops behave like this?

Thank you, Mr. Wiesenthal

Simon Wiesenthal, who lost 89 family members in the Holocaust and dedicated his life to hunting down Nazi war criminals, has died at age 96:

Wiesenthal, a Jew and former concentration camp inmate, achieved perhaps his greatest success in the discovery in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, the man Adolf Hitler entrusted with carrying out his genocide program against the Jews.

The Wiesenthal Center is still investigating some 1,200 cases of Nazi war criminals it suspects to be still alive and at large in 15 countries including Austria, Ukraine and Croatia.
[...]
Wiesenthal once reflected: "Should history repeat itself, my example will repeat itself too...and not once, but fifty-fold."

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, which carries on his legacy of fighting anti-Semitism and bigotry, has much more.

Quote of the Day

George Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) on the season premiere of Arrested Development: "You seem more villanous than usual, mother. Are you sober?"

(And, yes, there really is an imoscar.com website, with some tantalizing hints about future episodes.)

Correction: geez, here I am talking up Arrested Development to anyone who will listen, and I can't even get the name of Jason Bateman's character (Michael) correct.

By the way, the fact that Somebody Out There Actually Loves Raymond, or So I'm Told, Even Though I Don't Know Anyone Who Watches It could win three Emmys including "Best Comedy/Variety Series", while Arrested Development gets one lousy writing award, says all you need to know about award shows in general and the Emmys in particular.

Parity

After two weeks of the NFL regular season, only seven teams (out of 32) are still undefeated. The league's two most potent offences are the Giants and Bengals, while the Colts have the best defence.

Using all my football knowledge and instincts, I correctly picked the winners of 7 games last week. The coin toss got 11 right.

Never mind

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin told his people they could go home. Federal authorities - who are completely, totally, 100% responsible for the Katrina catastrophe, as all right-thinking people everywhere know - said it was too early. Now, with another storm heading toward the city, Nagin is telling people they should leave again:

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has suspended re-entry into the city over fears tropical storm Rita could strike.

Days earlier, Nagin had OK'd the return of residents to neighborhoods that had suffered the least damage.
[...]
Earlier Monday, U.S. President George Bush questioned the plan to allow residents to return to New Orleans, given ongoing concerns about the threat of more flooding and safety in the city.

The doctors supported the view of Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thad Allen, head of the federal government's hurricane response, which is at odds with advice issued by Nagin.

Between this and other local officials blatantly making up horror stories about the allegedly slow federal response, one of two things are becoming clear:

1. responsibility for Katrina is shared with local and state, not just federal, officials; or,

2. Karl Rove's hurricane-generating, levee-breaching machine also has a mind-control function, which can make local offcials act at least as incompetently as Mike Brown.

Deja Vu

The North Koreans, with whom a deal in principle was supposedly reached regarding its nuclear weapons program, want a nuclear reactor:

North Korea pledged Monday to eliminate its nuclear weapons and nuclear programs in exchange for energy and security, but a day later it demanded that the U.S. give it a light-water nuclear reactor before it rejoins the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and ends its weapons program.

During the talks, North Korea had demanded that it be given the light-water reactor – a type less easily diverted for weapons use – but Washington and other participating countries balked at that demand.
[...]
Both the United States and Japan, members of the six-nation disarmament talks, rejected the North’s latest demand.

“This is not the agreement that they signed and we’ll give them some time to reflect,” State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said. (via LGF)

Boy, if you can't trust a totalitarian Stalinist dynasty, who can you trust?

This was my church, once

I might - might - have something less than contempt for this if the Church of England, in return, demands that Muslim leaders apologize for 9/11; suicide bombing; the provocation of civil war in Iraq; the expulsion of the Jews from Arab countries after the founding of Israel; genocide in Sudan; sharia in Nigeria; persecution of non-Muslims in Saudi Arabia and Iran; persecution of the Kurds in Turkey, Iran and Saddam's Iraq; destruction of these giant Buddhas by the Taliban; Iranian, Syrian and Saudi sponsorship of Islamofascist terror; state-sanctioned promotion of anti-Semitic hatred and Holocaust denial; and the fact that every Arab state is less democratic than American-occupied Iraq. But gosh darn it, I can't see that happening...

The Church of England offered to take the lead in reconciling with Muslims by apologizing to their leaders for the US-led war in Iraq if the British government fails to do so.

The report suggests that a "truth and reconciliation" meeting between Christian and Muslim leaders would be an opportunity to apologize for the way the West has contributed to the tragedy in Iraq, including the March 2003 invasion led by the United States and Britain.
[...]
The report highlights a "long litany of errors" in the West's handling of Iraq which includes its support of Saddam Hussein over many years as a strategic ally against Iran, its willingness to sell him weapons and the suffering caused to the Iraqi people by sanctions.

Trade with Saddam and you're supporting dictatorship; impose sanctions on Saddam and you're starving the impoverished people of Iraq; depose Saddam by force and you're a neo-conservative warmonger. Got it.

Did I mention that I don't go to church much anymore?

Always proofread your letters

Go here, read page one and then page two. Thank me later.

"Trust, but verify"

That's what Ronald Reagan used to say about negotiating with the Soviet Union, and it goes double for dealing with North Korea. Actually, I'm not so sure about the "trust" part:

North Korea on Monday agreed to stop building nuclear weapons and allow international inspections in exchange for energy aid, economic cooperation and security assurances, in a first step toward disarmament after two years of six-nation talks.

“What is the purpose of operating it at this point?” said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill. “The time to turn it off would be about now.”
[...]
The agreement clinched seven days of talks aimed at setting out general principles for the North’s disarmament. Envoys agreed to return in early November to begin hashing out details of how that will be done.

Another Japanese official, who spoke on condition he not be named in order to discuss the issue more freely, noted that there was no common understanding among the participants about the nature of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Even if Kim Jong Il is serious this time, and a devastating war on the Korean peninsula is avoided, that still leaves the most totalitarian government on earth in power for God knows how many more years. A North Korean government without nuclear weapons is cause for some relief, but not celebration.

(INSERT YOUR OWN TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE REFERENCE HERE)

Saddam is gone, but the plunder continues

According to The Independent, over a billion dollars has been looted from the Iraqi defence ministry, right under the noses of American officials:

One billion dollars has been plundered from Iraq's defence ministry in one of the largest thefts in history, The Independent can reveal, leaving the country's army to fight a savage insurgency with museum-piece weapons.

"Huge amounts of money have disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal."
[...]
Most of the money was supposedly spent buying arms from Poland and Pakistan. The contracts were peculiar in four ways. According to Mr Allawi, they were awarded without bidding, and were signed with a Baghdad-based company, and not directly with the foreign supplier. The money was paid up front, and, surprisingly for Iraq, it was paid at great speed out of the ministry's account with the Central Bank. Military equipment purchased in Poland included 28-year-old Soviet-made helicopters. The manufacturers said they should have been scrapped after 25 years of service. Armoured cars purchased by Iraq turned out to be so poorly made that even a bullet from an elderly AK-47 machine-gun could penetrate their armour. A shipment of the latest MP5 American machine-guns, at a cost of $3,500 (£1,900) each, consisted in reality of Egyptian copies worth only $200 a gun. Other armoured cars leaked so much oil that they had to be abandoned. A deal was struck to buy 7.62mm machine-gun bullets for 16 cents each, although they should have cost between 4 and 6 cents.

The Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit says in a report to the Iraqi government that US-appointed Iraqi officials in the defence ministry allegedly presided over these dubious transactions.

It gets worse: hundreds of millions more may have been stolen from ministries responsible for resotring electrical generation in Iraq. All of this may go a long way toward explaining why the "insurgency" remains so strong and why reconstruction is moving so slowly - and if the revelations are true, it's a scandal of oil-for-food proportions.

Home and away

Michael Wilbon savages the NFL for making the Saints play their home opener in New York:

Don't be surprised if Redskins-Cowboys viewership takes a big hit from the New York Giants-New Orleans Saints game, moved from New Orleans to the Meadowlands and from yesterday afternoon to tonight because of the devastation of New Orleans and the Superdome. Of course, it's a game that shouldn't be played on Monday night, nor should it be played eight miles outside of New York City on the Giants' home field. It's a New York-centric decision, an impossibly arrogant presumption that if you can't be where you want to be, you certainly want to be in New York. Boy, it's so nice of the executives on Park Avenue to be so kind to the Saints, who are displaced from Louisiana and have relocated to San Antonio.

"America's Team" is playing tonight, you know. No, I'm not talking about the Cowboys. The Saints are the team so many of us root for now, especially after they held together so admirably last week, when football had to be way down the list of priorities, and found the resolve to beat heavily favored Carolina on the road. It was the inspirational moment so far in the NFL and they're the sentimental favorites for the entire season. And their reward for winning the game of the week was this? Give up a home game, play where their people can't come and see them, in New York, no less? Late last week, fewer than 2,000 Saints fans had reportedly purchased tickets to the Saints "home game" in suburban New Jersey.

Denial is a river in Germany

Just like Joey Smallwood in 1971, Gerhard Schroeder says he "really" won the German election, even though he got fewer votes than Angela Merkel's CDU:

Schroeder's campaign comeback was largely due to his success at portraying himself as the defender of Germany's cherished welfare state, and Merkel as it's free-market destroyer.

The outcome gave Merkel's party 225 seats, three more than the Social Democrats; the Free Democrats got 61, the Left Party 54 and the Greens 51.

As if all this wasn't messy enough, voting in Dresden was postponed to October 2 after a candidate died, so we could be a few weeks away from finding out who really won. For those of us who want to see Canada adopt a German-style combination of proportional representation and a "first past the post" parliamentary system, this isn't helping the cause at all.

I will hunt you down

The season premiere of Arrested Development airs tonight at 8PM Eastern on Fox. If you don't watch it, you're not allowed to read this blog ever again.

I never doubted them for a second, I really didn't

Yes, I know, you shouldn't crown a rookie quarterback your team's savior because of one good game. (Never, ever forget that Ryan Leaf won the first two games of his NFL career.) But in today's 38-6 rout of the Lions, Kyle Orton looked pretty darn impressive. If he continues to improve, and if the Bears' D continues to play so well, this season might not be a washout after all.

As for the Lions, does anyone think Harrington would still be the starter if Jeff Garcia wasn't hurt?

It's over for Schroeder

Angela Merkel and the CDU won a plurality of the votes in the German election - but not enough to form a majority government, even with the Free Democrats (who got around 10% of the vote, much better than expected). A "grand coalition" with the Social Democrats looks likely:

Germany's centre-right Christian Democrats, led by Angela Merkel, have failed to win a governing majority in Sunday's election, exit polls suggest.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats are estimated to have won about 34% of votes.

In theory, Schroeder might have enough votes to form a coalition with the Greens and the ex-commies - God help Germany if that happens - but atfer this defeat, it's unlikely the Social Democrats will keep him around. Goodbye, Gerhard, and good riddance.

How to pay for Katrina

The libertarian Cato Institute has listed $62 billion in unnecessary spending which could be cut from the American federal budget. Cutting notoriously wasteful, desturctive agricultural subsidies by 50% would save over $10 billion alone. (via InstaPundit)

And if you think any of this actually will be cut, I have some beautiful real estate in southeast Louisiana I'd love to sell you.

We finally have something in common

Michael Moore is asking Canadians not to watch Bowling for Columbine on CBC tonight.

The wrong side of history

Canadian Press, Sept. 18:

Despite its refusal to fight in Iraq, Canada is complicit in the U.S. war on terrorism and should withdraw from Afghanistan, an outspoken left-wing British MP said Saturday.

"Your ships in the Gulf and your soldiers in Afghanistan are doing the dirty work of George W. Bush and Tony Blair. They are freeing American ships and soldiers to go to Fallujah and massacre the people of Iraq."

Associated Press, Sept. 18:

Afghans chose a legislature for the first time in decades on Sunday, embracing their newly recovered democratic rights and braving threats of Taliban attacks to cast votes in schools, tents and mosques.

Reports of violence came in from around Afghanistan as it sought to claw its way back from more than a quarter-century of conflict, but there were no immediate signs of a spectacular attack that officials had feared from Taliban militants who vowed to disrupt the vote.

Update: Greg Palast has uncovered the shocking truth about George Galloway:

Where did this guy come from? Who invited him here? The answer: US Senate REPUBLICANS. As Cindy Sheehan was gathering public sympathy as the Gold Star mom against the killing in Iraq, the Republican party decided to import an easier target to pummel. So they brought over the “I-salute-your-courage, Saddam” religious fundamentalist crack-pot who can’t tell us where the money went.

I’m sorry, but I’m not going to let Karl Rove or some sick GOP Senator pick my heroes for me.

Is there anything Karl Rove can't do?

Update II: several prominent New Democrats, including Joe Comartin, Howard Hampton and Olivia Chow, showed up to pay homage to the Gorgeous one.

Australia dodged a bullet

For the past week or so, Tim Blair has been blogging about the recently published diaries of former Aussie opposition leader Mark Latham, and the revelations are absolutely astonishing to read. This guy made Richard Nixon look level-headed. I would have supported John Howard anyway, but now even Latham's former supporters are conceding that the man was unfit to run a country.

The news in New Zealand is not so good: the left-wing government of Helen Clark has appearently been re-elected by the skin of its teeth (with 1% of the vote, and one seat, more than the conservative opposition). But absentee ballots have yet to be counted, and "Wind Rider" says they could change the results completely. Here's hoping.

I guess the Prius was in the shop that day

Turns out Jesus would drive a Chevy Suburban.

(via InstaPundit)

Somewhere in Hell, Erich Honnecker is laughing

The uneasy allliance between Germany's far-right political parties, the NPD and DVU, is looking like a flop. That's the good news. The bad news is that the new "Left Party", a new coalition of "reformed" East German Communists and Social Democrats who think Gerhard Schroeder is too moderate, could end up the third largest party in the Bundestag:

Part populist, part socialist, the Left Party currently commands between 7 and 9 percent of the vote, ahead of the conservatives' possible coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Schröder's junior coalition partner, the Green Party. Should they retain their lead, they could force the CDU and the SPD into a "grand coalition," with Merkel as chancellor and Schröder's party as her junior partner - a prospect experts predict would halt the CDU's planned pro-market reforms because of political infighting.

The Left Party, on the other hand, invokes terms like "social economic justice" to comfort voters like Geppe by suggesting alternatives to liberal reform.
[...]
The Left is strongest in the economically depressed East, where current polls show them commanding around 30 percent of the vote, several points ahead of both the CDU and SPD. The party's push for further tax hikes on the rich in order to finance employment programs, the education system, and the continuation of Germany's welfare system resonates with a region that lived under a socialist economy for more than 40 years.

The Social Democrats say they won't enter into a coalition with the Left Party - but after this, all bets are off.

A scientifical experiment

When I made my Week 2 NFL picks earlier today, someone commented that, given my record to date, I'd probably be better off flipping a coin.

Well, I'm going to put my reputation (such as it is) on the line and use a standard 1976 Canadian quarter to see how my football picks compare. Heads means I pick the home team, tails means I pick the visitor. Here's how it came out:

Baltimore at Tennessee
Buffalo at Tampa Bay
Detroit at Chicago (the quarter has more confidence in the Bears than I do)
Jacksonville at Indianapolis
Minnesota at Cincinnati
New England at Carolina
Pittsburgh at Houston (yes, it really took seven coin flips before I finally got tails)
San Francisco at Philadelphia
Atlanta at Seattle
St. Louis at Arizona
Cleveland at Green Bay
Miami at N.Y. Jets
San Diego at Denver
Kansas City at Oakland
N.Y. Giants at New Orleans
Washington at Dallas

On Tuesday morning, we'll see if I can pick football winners better than an inanimate object. Bring it on!

Youppi! lives

I hate the Habs, but I'm glad to see the big guy getting work again.

The classy campaign

You will not believe the election posters Rolf Schwanitz, a cabinet minister in Gerhard Schroeder's government, is using. (On second thought, if you regularly read Davids Medienkritik, you will believe it.)

There appear to be no depths to which Schroeder's SPD won't sink to cling to power. And the scary thing is, in a Germany where a third of the population under age 30 believes the Bush Administration carried out the 9/11 attacks itself, it will probably work.

He hates Canada, too

George Galloway has been allowed into Canada for some reason, and don't think we peaceful Canucks meet his impossibly high moral standards:

Fresh off a rousing debate with writer Christopher Hitchens, televised live from New York Wednesday evening, Mr. Galloway indicated that he would be pulling no punches to avoid criticism.

"It's a hypocritical stand and it's one that, I can assure you, is not fooling very many people in the Middle East," he said.

Not surprisingly, Galloway is fooling a lot of left-wingers in Toronto, where he's scheduled to make three public appearances:

Mr. Galloway, who was ejected by the British Labour Party for his anti-war rhetoric and ran successfully in the most recent election as the standard-bearer for a new party called Respect, will speak tonight at the University of Toronto, an appearance organized by the Toronto Coalition to Stop the War that is expected to pack Convocation Hall.

He is to appear tomorrow at the joint annual conference of the Islamic Circle of North America and the Muslim Association of Canada. Tomorrow evening, he will be the main draw at a fundraising dinner organized by the Canadian Islamic Congress.
[...]
Mohamed Elmasry, the head of the Canadian Islamic Congress, said that the presence of Mr. Galloway has helped move hundreds of tickets for the fundraiser and that there should be as many as 500 in the room by the time the British MP takes the stage tomorrow night. He shrugged off the idea that a group trying to win mainstream acceptance might want to choose a less divisive figure for its event.

"I'm surprised that he was not invited to go to Ottawa to talk sense to our politicians," he added.

It's not surprising to find out Elmasry is a Galloway fan. Not surprising at all.

Must be "sue a blogger" week

Radio commentator, author and asshole Garrison Keillor is threatening legal action against a Minnesota blogger selling "A Prairie Ho Companion" T-shirts. Meanwhile, here in Canada, the Jehovah's Witnesses are gunning for the operator of a website featuring embarassing quotes from old issues of The Watch Tower. (Certainly, if I were a devout Jehovah's Witness, I'd prefer that this not come to light.)

Week 2 picks

I'm 5-11, so there's no way I can do worse this week. Well, that's not true: I could correctly pick four games or less...

Baltimore at Tennessee
Buffalo at Tampa Bay
Detroit at Chicago
Jacksonville at Indianapolis
Minnesota at Cincinnati - my upset special, I guess, though the Bengals looked like the much better team last week.
New England at Carolina
Pittsburgh at Houston
San Francisco at Philadelphia
Atlanta at Seattle
St. Louis at Arizona
Cleveland at Green Bay
Miami at N.Y. Jets
San Diego at Denver
Kansas City at Oakland
N.Y. Giants at New Orleans
Washington at Dallas

Conspirozoids on the march

The Village Voice followed members of the "9/11 truth" movement around NYC for a few days on the fourth anniversary of the attacks:

The anguish was palpable at Ground Zero yesterday, as family members made their way down a long ramp into the vast emptiness of the World Trade Center site, then took turns reading out the names of their lost loved ones.

Into this somber setting marched about a dozen 9-11 conspiracists, who claimed a patch of sidewalk to preach what they called the truth. "These people weren't killed by Arab terrorists. You've been lied to!" shouted a woman who looked vaguely like Joey Ramone, holding up one end of a banner that read, "9-11 World Trade Center: Controlled Demolition."
[...]
It seemed most family members did their best to ignore the speakout. "That's what this country is about, that people can say what they want even if I don't agree with it," said Rudy Dimmling of Westbury, Long Island, whose brother William died in the North Tower, leaving behind a wife and two kids. "To have more fingerpointing and Congressional hearings, where does that get us? I can't live with myself to think that that was a conspiracy," he said, clearly pained at the thought of even having to address such a question.

One might have thought the Bush administration's bungled response to the Katrina catastrophe could put a crimp in conspiracists' efforts to prove that the 9-11 was much more than just a colossal "failure of the imagination," as the 9-11 commission claimed. After seeing firsthand how President Bush and FEMA ignored years of warnings about the threat of a hurricane on the Gulf Coast, then dawdled while people drowned, maybe it's not so hard to fathom how our vacationing president could have blown off repeated intelligence warnings about the growing threat of al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden in the summer of 2001. [Told you it was the Village Voice - Ed.]

Yet it seems Katrina is now just more fuel for the conspiracy pyre, with the Internet buzzing with theories of how the feds blew up the levees to flood poor areas of New Orleans and preserve the ritzy French Quarter.

Down at Ground Zero, the 9-11 "truth" warriors were clearly emboldened by the hurricane fiasco. "The public saw people dying while Condi was shopping for shoes, Dick Cheney was playing fake cowboy, and Bush was backstage playing guitar," relished Ben Maurier of Brooklyn, who predicted a wash of new converts to the cause. "If they knowingly allowed that many people to die in New Orleans, why should it be a stretch that the government did 9-11?"

(via LGF)

The Galloway cult

From Exit Zero's report on the Hitch-Galloway debate:

The guys behind us, greying, rumpled academic types, were definitely Galloway dittoheads. Some were downright rabid. When Hitchens requested a moment of silence for the Iraqis who were sadistically murdered by the insurgency, they were among those shouting "NO! NO!" When Hitch praised the US for making life better for the Afghan people, they shouted "Who Cares?" When Galloway said that the 9/11 hijackers emerged out of a swamp created by us, their cheers didn't turn to boos.

Galloway was the perfect representative of the totalitarian thug. If Galloway had been speaking German his delivery would have mirrored Hitler's from the rally at Nuremburg. He used the same gestures, the same barking, bombastic style, shouting into the microphone, jabbing the air with muscular authority. Hitch said of Galloway, "The man's search for a tyrannical fatherland never ends!" It seems that Galloway plans to create his own.
[...]
Robert Paxton, in his book "The Anatomy of Fascism" observes that when a political group loses power and feels humiliated or victimized, they can begin to lose faith in the democratic process. They become more willing to abandon democratic ideals.

Fascist ideals don't appeal to the poor or the oppressed, but they do appeal to the members of the wealthy and middle class who feel that they should (or must) have more power than they already do. Wealth and prosperity don't discourage fascism - as we've seen in the Middle East, wealth causes fascism to thrive.

Even far-left journalist Greg Palast has had enough of Gorgeous George:

Unlike Hitchens, I cannot support the Prevaricator-in-Chief, the President who ordered Cindy Sheehan's son, Casey, to march to his death in Najaf. But I'll be damned if I'll cheer some rich white Brit-hole who brings joy to Casey's killers.

Satire is dead

"Republican Talking Points for Bloggers", posted at imao.us, Sept. 12: "Mentions of our weather machine should be ignored instead of ridiculed. DO NOT MENTION THE WEATHER MACHINE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES."

Moonbat Central, Sept. 13: "[University of Ottawa economics professor Michel Chossudovsky] claims that the US has new weapons that cause hurricanes and tsunamis. Now his 'work' is being cited as authoritative by moonbats all over the world who claim that Bush intentionally caused Hurrican Katrina."

The Super Bowl 4-12 shuffle

A brief history of Chicago Bears quarterbacks since 1999. If you're a Chicago fan, read it and weep. If you're a fan of any other team in the NFL, even Arizona or Detroit, read it and give thanks to the Good Lord above that, no matter who's running your team, they aren't as incompetent as the people running mine.

(via Pejman, who lives in Chicago and can therefore pay good money to watch Da Bears suck in person)

Update: several of these could apply to the Bears, too.

"The most fisked piece ever published by a Canadian newspaper"

Bob Tarantino notes that Jonathan Kay, in the National Post, had at that horrid Paul William Roberts article which appeared in last Saturday's Globe. (Kay's rebuttal is stuck behind a subscriber wall, but a friend e-mailed it to me. If you want me to forward it, let me know.) It turns out that Roberts' theories about the world economy, just like his Afghanistan-was-invaded-to-build-a-pipeline nonsense, came from some lunatic conspiracy website:

Roberts on the real reason America waged the Iraq war: "Before the invasion of Iraq, OPEC apparently was considering whether to start trading in dual currencies, and some economists believe that an announcement like this would send the value of a dollar falling by up to 40%. By gaining control of the Iraqi oil fields -- the world's second richest after Saudi Arabia -- the United States has effectively prevented an assault on the dollar."

Turns out the 40% figure originates with a "personal research project" posted on the Internet by an American health-care worker named William Clark. Among Clark's many astounding claims is that "the effect of an OPEC switch to the Euro would be [that] the dollar would crash anywhere from 20-40%." Clark's source? "An astute and anonymous friend." This friend, apparently, has morphed into what Roberts calls "some economists."

And then there's Roberts' theories about how the Pentagon got its shape:

Roberts on U.S. State Department policy planner George Kennan: "Only five countries, [Kennan] stated confidently, could ever pose [a serious threat to the United States]: Britain, Germany, Japan, Israel and Russia ... The five-enemies theory is said to be one reason for the Pentagon's shape."

Problem: The Pentagon was dedicated in 1943. The State of Israel didn't come into being until 1948. Where Roberts came up with this bizarre whopper I have no idea. It reads like something out of a modern-day Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Roberts' scribblings were ludicrous on their face to anyone with a link to Google and a lick of common sense, but it was good enough for Canada's self-proclaimed National Newspaper (not to mention Gwynneth Paltrow). By the time the tenth anniversary of 9/11 rolls around, unfortunately, papers like the Globe will probably be running lengthy pieces arguing that Bush masterminded the attacks himself - after warning the 4,000 Jews to stay home, of course.

Update: full text of Kay's article here.

The great debate

A very, very fast torrent of the Hitchens-Galloway debate is available here. (I haven't heard it yet, but commenters at LGF are saying Hitch chewed up Gorgeous George and spit him out. The Times calls it a draw.)

Update: Patrick at OxBlog live-blogged it and gives it to Hitchens.

Update II: a round-up of firsthand reports here.

Taking back the dinosaurs

Christian fundamentalists are using dinosaur theme parks to argue against the theory of evolution. (I love America, guys, but this is the kind of story for which the phrase "only in America" was invented.)

Dinny the roadside dinosaur has found religion.

"They're used to teach people that there's no God, and they're used to brainwash people," he said. "Evolutionists get very upset when we use dinosaurs. That's their star."

Reason's Jesse Walker uses this story as an excuse to link to a Christian sci-fi comic book in which fallen angels sent the dinosaurs to attack Noah's Ark. (Sort of like what happened to the unicorn, I understand.) If they do make that into a movie, I'm there on opening night.

I'll have a crab juice

An investigation was launched Tuesday after a Central Florida man drank soda contaminated with urine, according to a Local 6 News report.

Public officials confirmed to Local 6 News that an employee urinated in a Mountain Dew bottle and put it on the store shelves at the Publix-owned Pix convenience store located off Howland in Deland, Fla.

People succeeded where government failed

Amidst the thinly disguised gloating of people who say Hurricane Katrina spelled the end of small-government conservatism, Anne Appelbaum notes that, in many cases, private organizations and individuals did a much better job saving people than the government did - at least until the government made them stop helping:

...it's important to ignore the hasty conclusions that have already been drawn, both here and abroad, about the victory of "big government" and the death of a certain kind of American individualism. The German chancellor -- once again using American politics in his election campaign -- has already called the disaster an argument for "strong government." Polly Toynbee, a columnist for Britain's Guardian, declared that Katrina revealed "a hollowed superpower . . . a country that is not a country at all, but atomised, segmented individuals living parallel lives as far apart as possible." A Los Angeles Times article, headlined "A Comeback for Big Government," more objectively quoted lots of experts agreeing that in the wake of the hurricane, the administration will "put aside its interest in small government."

By the same token, consider the effectiveness of the relief strategies so far. With great fanfare, the federal government announced it would distribute debit cards to Katrina victims. The result was chaos, anger and expectations of fraud. Quietly, the Red Cross has been paying evacuees' hotel bills. The result is that 57,000 people have time to plan what to do next. Massive government efforts to get people into massive shelters have led to dissatisfaction, delays, long lines and frustration. But private initiatives -- ranging across the political spectrum from MoveOn.org's Hurricanehousing.org, which is advertising space in thousands of private homes, to First Baptist Church in Athens, Tex., which has just installed six new showers -- are helping people find better housing faster. Over the longer term, it's also pretty safe to bet that people who relocate thanks to a church, find a job thanks to a charitable Web site, and get by thanks to their extended families are going to do a lot better, economically and psychologically, than the people who hang around waiting to be helped by a government jobs program and a government trauma counselor.

Only the most principled libertarian would say there should be no role for the government in disaster relief. (By "principled," I mean "completely friggin' insane.") But most of the Katrina horror stories I've read involve pointless regulations, red tape and jurisdictional confusion, not a lack of government resources.

Of course, the government was there for at least one resident of New Orleans:

Amid the chaos and confusion that engulfed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck, a congressman used National Guard troops to check on his property and rescue his personal belongings — even while New Orleans residents were trying to get rescued from rooftops, ABC News has learned.

On Sept. 2 — five days after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast — Rep. William Jefferson, D-La., who represents New Orleans and is a senior member of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, was allowed through the military blockades set up around the city to reach the Superdome, where thousands of evacuees had been taken.
[...]
The water reached to the third step of Jefferson's house, a military source familiar with the incident told ABC News, and the vehicle pulled up onto Jefferson's front lawn so he wouldn't have to walk in the water. Jefferson went into the house alone, the source says, while the soldiers waited on the porch for about an hour.

"I don't think there is any explanation for an elected official using resources for their own personal use, when those resources should be doing search and rescue, or they should be helping with law enforcement in the city," said Jerry Hauer, a homeland security expert and ABC News consultant.

Freedom fighters strike again

At least 150 Iraqis have been killed in a new wave of "insurgent" attacks, the largest of which saw a suicide bomber blow himself up in a crowd of labourers waiting for rides to work.

Marcus, at Harry's Place, poses a question I'd like to see Hitch put to George Galloway this evening:

If anyone can explain why slaughtering construction workers on their way to rebuild their country in the circumstances set out above is a legitimate, morally correct thing to do, or even a regrettable but tactically neccessary tactic forced on them by the occupiers, I'd ask them to have the courage of their convictions and spell out their reasoning in the comments so we know what sort of thing we're dealing with.

The monster gets more powerful

The European Supreme Court - who even knew the EU had a Supreme Court? - has ruled that Brussels can impose and enforce criminal statutes in every EU member state, including Great Britain:

Brussels has been given the power to compel British courts to fine or imprison people for breaking EU laws, even if the Government and Parliament are opposed.

EU members have always insisted that the power to set criminal law goes to the heart of national sovereignty and must be decided by national governments and parliaments. The Luxembourg judges ruled, however, that national governments could not exempt EU law from being upheld by criminal sanctions.

For crying out loud, Britain, get out while you still can.

Gaza's - and Britain's - descent into madness

Melanie Phillips has a long, depressing post on Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism among British government advisors, the torching and looting of synagogues in Gaza, and her countrymens' relative indifference to (and excuses for) same.

The Jerusalem Post has more on the orgy of looting and violence in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority's inability and/or unwillingness to stop it, and Mahmoud Abbas' continued whining about "occupation":

The Palestinian Authority and Egypt agreed on Tuesday to close the border near Rafah to prevent Palestinians from crossing into Egypt.

The agreement was reached during a tense meeting between Egyptian and PA security officials after thousands of Palestinians infiltrated the border over the past 48 hours.
[...]
Many Palestinians tore down a wall and security fence over the past 48 hours, entering Egypt to buy cheap cigarettes, medication, food and electric appliances. [You mean Egyptians had a wall and fence to keep the Palestinians out? Boy, it's funny how the media, during the debate over Israel's "apartheid wall", never gave us that information, isn't it? - Ed.]

Others said they crossed to see relatives living in the Egyptian part of Rafah.

In an attempt to halt the looting, PA policemen sealed off the former settlements and declared them closed military zones. Club-wielding policemen intercepted some of the looters, confiscating water pipes, roof tiles and window frames. One man who refused to hand over stolen items was severely beaten. The policemen also banned cars from entering Neveh Dekalim.
[...]
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said on Tuesday that the Israeli withdrawal was not an end to occupation and that Israel must also withdraw from the West Bank and Jerusalem.

Qurei said that as far as the PA was concerned, the occupation hasn't ended because Israel continues to control the border crossings and the airspace, as well as water resources.

Now, why would Israel want to control its border with these people? I blame that "Jewish supremacism" David Duke talks about.

(via LGF)

Ouch

I'm 5-11 after week 1. This ain't looking good.

The Eight Americas

Described here.

Get over yourself, Kim

Kim Campbell, who oversaw the second-most* humiliating defeat in Canadian political history, is whining about Brian Mulroney's criticism in the much-talked-about new book by Peter C. Newman:

Former prime minister Kim Campbell delivered a blistering response last night to the profanity-laced criticisms of her from her predecessor, Brian Mulroney, in a new book by author Peter C. Newman.

"The question that begs asking is why he then gave me, as his successor, only 21/2 months to turn the party fortunes around before an election had to be called."
[...]
"What Brian Mulroney wanted in 1993 was not a successor who could actually have a chance to govern, but a scapegoat who would bear the electoral burden of his unpopularity, and allow him to retire 'undefeated' into the historical pantheon of which he is convinced he is a member."

Here's the thing, Professor Campbell. I have no idea whether the boyfriend stuff is true, but I do know this much:

1. Nobody forced you to take over the "impossible" job of leading the PC Party of Canada in 1993. Jean Charest was more than willing to take it - as were Jim Edwards, Garth Turner and Patrick Boyer, come to think of it. If the election was truly unwinnable, you should have noticed it, being a cabinet minister and all.

2. I remember that campaign. I worked on that campaign for Loyola Hearn and Ross Reid in St. John's. And I remember the Tories' poll numbers being very, very good - about even with the Liberals - when the election was called. I thought we had a shot at winning, albeit with a reduced majority. And then you screwed it up. Your debate performance and TV commercials ("It's time") were among the worst in Canadian history, and that was before the ad which allegedly made fun of Jean Chretien's facial deformity. The Liberals had a TV spot ready showing you hugging Mulroney, but in the end they didn't even need it.

Even if we take Campbell at her word and agree that there was no way the PCs could have won in 1993, she was the difference between 2 seats and, say, 60.

*the worst defeat in Canadian political history was in the 1987 New Brunswick provincial election, when Richard Hatfield and the Tories were swept from office. And I mean swept - the Liberals won all 58 seats.

Let's get it on!

Christopher Hitchens debates Jew-hating, Islamofascist-supporting, Assad-worshipping, lying, thieving British MP George Galloway tomorrow night in New York. Streaming audio will be available on the web, but I really wish I could be there in person - preferably wearing this shirt - especially since I think the crowd will be heavily pro-Galloway. (The event will be "moderated" by Amy Goodman, which should say it all.)

...thanks in part to Eve [Ensler] and Jane [Fonda], the "anti-war" movement has as its new star a man who is openly pro-war, but openly on the other side. A man who supported the previous oppressors of the region—the Soviet army in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq—who supports its current oppressors—Bashar Assad and his Lebanese proxies—and who still has time to endorse its potential future tyrants in the shape of the jihadists in Iraq and elsewhere. Galloway began his political life as a fifth-rate apologist for the Soviet Union, but he has now diversified into being an apologist for Stalinism, for fascism, and for jihadism all at once! All this, and Jane, too. One's cup runs over.

Readers of Harry's Place will be leafleting and picketing Galloway's appearances in New York, L.A., Madison and Toronto.

I must see this

Mr. T has signed a deal to star in a pilot for [TV Land] called "I Pity the Fool," in which he'll dole out advice and try to help people in difficult situations. Lions Gate TV is producing the project.

It's presumed that in the course of helping people get their lives right, no jibba jabba will be allowed.
[...]
"I Pity the Fool" will find Mr. T acting as a "motivational guru" helping people improve their personal and professional lives. Mr. T will use his own varied life experience as basis for his strategy to help others.

The 20 most obnoxious Katrina quotes

John Hawkins has compiled a list - which, despite the name of his blog, includes several appalling quotes from right-wingers as well as lefties.

Among them is Barbara Bush's heavily publicized comment about how many of the evacuees "were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them." She put it in a remarkably tactless way, but I thought there was a small kernel of truth in her statement - I won't be one bit surprised if many of the poor residents of New Orleans, an economically moribund city even before Katrina struck, decide to stay in Texas or relocate elsewhere. If I had nothing waiting for me back home, I certainly would.

I would have replaced that quote with Tom Delay's "isn't this kind of fun?" remark or something from Aussie moonbat Richard Neville. Or maybe the entirety of Jeremy Clarkson's appalling Sun column on the disaster. Clarkson begins by asking how America "could be crippled by a bit of wind and rain", and denounces the Yanks for being stupid, racist, violent and boxed in by stacks and stacks of silly, pointless regulations. This from a country brought to a standstill by two inches of snow, which can't hold a football match without someone getting killed, and where you can go to jail for selling bananas by the pound instead of the kilogram. I love Britain, but rarely has that "glass houses" dictum been so appropriate.

Live from Lebanon

Michael Totten is moving to Beirut for six months. Wish him luck.

Hooray for dictatorship!

Bob Tarantino has already fisked this loathsome tripe to within an inch of its life, but here's the part that really caught my eye:

At least under Saddam Hussein, everyone knew the government lied to them about everything all the time, and also that the media were merely a wing of the regime. Americans may just be waking up to a similar realization, since, thus far at least, no one has told them just how disastrous this disaster is going to be for the nation. You can always tell when the neocons are rattled by some event: They accuse anyone discussing the corporate or government role in it of playing politics with human tragedy. This, of course, is not something they would ever do.

Of course, being a military dictatorship, Egypt also would have found this a lot easier to do. [emphasis added]

Yeah, if Egypt is ever plagued by locusts and frogs again, I'm sure Hosni Mubarak's legendarily efficient emergency services will know just what to do.

I've seen other people make this kind of argument since Katrina struck - and they're usually self-described "progressives", not the Buchananite neofascists you'd expect. It was Mark Steyn, I believe, Colby Cosh [see correction below - Ed.] who said the left believes George W. Bush is a fascist dictator - except that, in response to Hurricane Katrina, he didn't behave enough like a fascist dictator. The Bush Administration is probably guilty of dithering and indecisiveness in the face of a massive natural disaster - as illustrated in this Washington Post story, which also describes the shocking negligence and incompetence of local officials - but let's look at the bigger picture for a second.

We're talking about a hurricane that devastated an area the size of Britain, followed by massive flooding, but the death toll will likely be much, much lower than the commonly cited estimate of 10,000. It's currently around 400, and may climb into the thousands - a heartbreaking catastrophe, to be sure, but can you imagine how many would have died had there not been an elected government and a free press?

Here's a list of the 100 worst natural disasters of the 20th century. You will find remarkably few democracies on it, but China and the Soviet Union make multiple appearances. In theory it could be easier for a dictator to commit all of a country's resources to disaster relief, but by God, it rarely seems to work out that way.

Maybe the people making this kind of argument are being facetious, but you know some of them are not. And when the blessings of freedom and democracy are being belittled and mocked, those doing so deserve to be called on it.

Correction: it was Colby Cosh, not Mark Steyn:

In the wake of all this, there is probably no single provision of the U.S. Constitution left untrampled, the Posse Comitatus Act appears destined for a necktie party, and the 49% of Americans who have been complaining for five years about George W. Bush being a dictator are now vexed to the point of utter incoherence because for the last fortnight he has failed to do a sufficiently convincing impression of a dictator.

And now everything is going to be 100% perfect

Mike Brown has resigned.

Hate-Pop

The only silver lining to this is that it's only a matter of time before some members of Hamas, like the Taliban, decide all music is evil and turn their guns on the "Yassin Band". Here's hoping...

They may be Islamic radicals but even Hamas values a catchy pop tune, cranking out 10 new victory songs about Israel's historic pullout from the Gaza Strip.

The music has scored with Gaza's youth, weaned on a culture of guns and "martyrdom". (via LGF)

Game, set and match to InstaPundit

Glenn Reynolds: "Bush is, in my estimation, adequate as President, but not much more. I've thought that all along -- which is why you've never seen the kind of lyrical praise of Bush here that once appeared at Andrew Sullivan's place, or the kind of disappointment with Bush you see at Sullivan's place now."

That's gonna leave a mark.

Hellyer's new cause

Former Trudeau defence minister Paul Hellyer, the very embodiment of a leader without followers, is now a UFO activist.

Another moderate

Ahmad Thomson: prominent lawyer, representative of Britain's Association of Muslim Lawyers, advisor to Tony Blair, and hatemongering moonbat:

Tony Blair decided to wage war on Iraq after coming under the influence of a "sinister" group of Jews and Freemasons, a Muslim barrister who advises the Prime Minister has claimed.

Mr Thomson wrote a book in 1994 in which he said Freemasons and Jews controlled the governments of Europe and America and described the claim that six million Jews died in the Holocaust as a "big lie".

I was waiting for someone to drag the Freemasons into it.

Sharia rejected

Ontario is not going to allow family-law arbitration based on Islamic law - but to avoid the appearance of discriminating against Islam, they're going to outlaw Christian and Jewish arbitration, too:

Seeking to end months of debate, Premier Dalton McGuinty now says "there will be no sharia law in Ontario" -- an announcement that should quell a growing public-relations crisis concerning the use of Islamic law, but which also exposes Queen's Park to attacks from other religions.

This means that orthodox Jews and some Christian leaders may soon make a common cause with fundamentalist Muslims in seeking to limit the scope of the new proposals.
[...]
Many moderate Muslims say they are overjoyed by the Premier's announcement.

"Divorces are happening behind closed doors and the woman is banned from having custody of her children," Ms. Arjomand said. "She is being sent back to her home country to live with her relatives."

America's Team

Saints 23, Panthers 20. When the French Quarter reopens, Saints kicker John Carney can have all the free drinks he wants.

(P.S. So far I'm 2-8. I should add a disclaimer to my football picks saying I have no friggin' idea what I'm doing.)

Screw the Holocaust

The sheer gall of many "moderate" Muslim activists never ceases to amaze me:

Advisers appointed by Tony Blair after the London bombings are proposing to scrap the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Day because it is regarded as offensive to Muslims.

The Queen is patron of the charity that organises the event and the Home Office pays £500,000 a year to fund it. The committees argue that the special status of Holocaust Memorial Day fuels extremists’ sense of alienation because it “excludes” Muslims. (via Harry's Place)

In related news, a reader tipped me off to this ultra-right fringe blog which says the Joooooooos deliberately blew up the 17th Street levee in New Orleans. For some people, be it Muslims in Britain or neo-Nazis in America, it always comes down to the omnipotent, nefarious Jews.

Words to Remember

Rudy Giuliani, 1 October 2001, quoted at the Pajamas Media site:

Look at that destruction, that massive, senseless, cruel loss of human life ... and then I ask you to look in your hearts and recognize that there is no room for neutrality on the issue of terrorism. You're either with civilization or with terrorists.

We're right and they're wrong. It's as simple as that.

Temporary Home

"Tom Paine", from Silent Running, is temporarily posting here.

Mubarak's fraud

Jay Nordlinger discussed a theory a few months ago:

Years ago, the columnist Charles Krauthammer joked about what he called “the Tirana Index.” This was a way of measuring how unfree a country was. For example, election returns out of this capital would tell us that the Communist dictator, Hoxha, had received 98.6 percent of the vote. (You had to wonder about the other 1.4 percent.) The greater a dictator’s vote, the more unfree the country was. That was the Tirana Index. Of course, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq, improved on Hoxha by securing a full 100 percent of the vote.

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak got 88%. Even this sham was better than nothing, but Egypt still has a long, long way to go before it's as democratic as Israel. Or Iraq.

Farewell to Minardi

The last truly independent F1 team will be taken over by Red Bull for next season:

Red Bull confirmed they will take over control of the Minardi Formula One team as of November 1.

Red Bull says no decisions have been made regarding the team's name or who will drive for the squad in 2006. The only stipulation in the deal is that the team remain based in Italy.

Minardi never even came close to winning anything (although the perenially underrated Pierluigi Martini briefly led an F1 race in 1989), but they always showed up, time and time again, with a total budget probably smaller than what Ferrari spends on champagne. They're the last throwback to an era in which anyone with the ambition and money could own their own F1 team, and they will be missed.

That's assuming this deal goes through, of course. Will the FIA accept one company owning two teams? (Benetton and Ligier were briefly owned by the same company in the mid-nineties, but I remember that being just a temporary arrangement.)

Four years ago today...

As long as I live, I will never forget that moment on an ordinary Tuesday morning, when I realized that a plane smashing into the World Trade Center was not an accident. (Sorry to disappoint those of you who think I'm a kill-em-all warmonger, but my first thought was of a 1945 incident in which a U.S. military plane smashed into the Empire State Building in heavy fog.) Would I have started this blog at all had 9/11 not happened? Probably, but it would have been much later, and very different.

Winds of Change has a massive roundup of 9/11-related links. InstaPundit posts a couple of photos, the likes of which we've seen surprisingly little since that awful day. (On principle, I have to support CNN's bid to show dead bodies in New Orleans, but I wish they were as willing to show us the full horror of what happened on September 11, 2001. Or what happened to Daniel Pearl or Nick Berg.)

MEMRI has posted transcripts and video clips from Arab and Iranian television, regarding the wild 9/11 conspiracy theories endlessly promoted in that part of the world. (Most of them involve the omnipotent Jooooooos, of course, but at least one commentator says the World Council of Churches ordered Bush to carry out the attacks so they'd have an excuse to "Christianize" the world. I know a few bloggers who'd respond, "if only...")

Personally, I can't understand how most of the common conspiracy theories, such as the collapse of the WTC towers being caused by controlled demolition (the preparations for which none of the 50,000 workers therein ever noticed, of course), are any less insane than the theory that 4,000 Jews stayed home on 9/11. Ultimately, the conspiracy phenomenon comes down to two things: a rabid hatred of the Bush Administration and/or the American government, and a refusal to believe that 19 men with box cutters could pull off attacks of this magnitude. Unfortunately, like the JFK assassination industry, it's probably going to get more lucrative - and probably mainstream - as the years pass.

9/11 in an alternate universe

Imagine if the Bush Administration had placed the American public on high alert in the summer of 2001, because a massive terror attack involving crashing airplanes into skyscrapers was rumoured. It would have been denounced as "paranoia" and "fearmongering".

Imagine if Mohammed Atta and the other 18 hijackers had been arrested in a massive law-enforcement sweep, or even denied boarding on their flights. The cries of "racism" and "ethnic profiling" would still be heard four years later.

Imagine if fighter planes had shot down the hijacked airliners before they could reach their targets. The conspiracy theorists would have gone completely insane. The spectre of "Operation Northwoods" would be raised again and again by IndyMedia writers. Fringe journalists would say the fact that fighters were scrambled in time to intercept the jets was proof that the Bush Administration knew something big had been planned, because how could a large, lumbering military move that quickly?

Imagine if the World Trade Center towers had been damaged, but did not fall. Since everyone knows a fast airliner filled with jet fuel would be a powerful missile that would bring down the highest skyscraper, they must have launched the planes with just enough fuel to reach New York so they wouldn't destroy the headquarters for many of Bush's business associates, which in any event was almost certainly reinforced with stronger materials just before September 11.

Imagine if President Bush, upon being told that his country had been attacked, had abruptly stopped reading to these schoolchildren and leapt into action. Maureen Dowd and Heather Mallick would have sneered that, at long last, this chickenhawk man-child had the chance to play cowboy, regardless of how the schoolchildren might have been traumatized. Michael Ruppert's "9/11 timeline" would say this proved he had been tipped off about the attacks, because if he hadn't known about them he would have been too shocked to move.

Imagine if the Americans had invaded Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 hijackers, after ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan. Michael Moore would sneer that America had propped up the House of Saud in the first place, thereby taking away any moral authority to strike against them. International ANSWER would denounce the Bush Administration for its "insensitivity" in invading the land of the Two Holy Mosques. And if the Americans are going to take out the Saudis because they're such a vile dictatorship, why aren't they doing anything about Saddam Hussein?

Imagine if the Republicans had decided not to hold their convention in New York City in 2004. How dare they refuse to give New York, a city still recovering from the devastating 9/11 attacks, a major event that could pump millions of dollars into the local economy?

In short, try to imagine a world in which the last four years had been very, very different from what actually happened. Sadly, I suspect today's political landscape would look remarkably similar.

Never forget. Ever.

Week 1 picks

I'm not in any football pools or fantasy leagues this year, but I am going to put my reputation, such as it is, on the line every week. Here's how I think week 1 is going to shape up. My picks to win are in bold (and as you can see, I had been expecting an upset this past Thursday):

Oakland at New England - I'm 0-1 even before I make my picks.
Chicago at Washington - my Bears will win only 5 games this year, but this will be one of them. Washington has replaced Cincinnati as the most dysfunctional organization in the NFL.
Cincinnati at Cleveland - the Bengals' 15-year playoff drought ends this year.
Denver at Miami
Houston at Buffalo - I'm just not sure about J.P. Losman.
New Orleans at Carolina - the Saints are everyone's sentimental favorites right now, and against a lesser team I'd pick them to win. But Carolina is just too strong.
N.Y. Jets at Kansas City
Seattle at Jacksonville
Tampa Bay at Minnesota - Gruden is gone at the end of the season.
Tennessee at Pittsburgh - the Steelers won't be 15-1 again, but they'll win this one.
Arizona at N.Y. Giants - maybe it's wishful thinking, but I'm betting on Warner to surprise a lot of people this year.
Dallas at San Diego - Dallas will be better, but not good enough to beat the Chargers.
Green Bay at Detroit - I'm picking the Lions for a wild card spot. Really.
St. Louis at San Francisco
Indianapolis at Baltimore
Philadelphia at Atlanta - the Eagles will win their division again, but with all their personnel problems right now, this is a good chance for the Falcons to steal a big win.

Speaking of football, I strongly recommend this podcast.

Shut up and drive

Dear Jeremy Clarkson: I download Top Gear every week as soon as the torrents are available. I read your Times automotive reviews every week. I respect your opinion as long as you're talking about anything automotive-related. But if you did indeed write this, I have just one thing to say:

Fuck You.

Update: Megan McArdle has little time for Euro-smugness in the wake of Katrina, either:

The area that was devastated by the hurricane is approximately the size of Great Britain. Tell me again how the EU would have gotten everything under control in a matter of hours had 90% of England, Scotland, and Wales been flattened by an Atlantic storm that also knocked out electricity to Ireland and France.

Actually, to his credit, Clarkson is no fan of the EU. But I'd love to see him tell me, with a straight face, that the brunt of a catastophic storm in London wouldn't be disproportionately borne by that city's large, poor immigrant communities.

Listen to me

I'm way overdue in mentioning this, but I was interviewed on last week's Shire Network News podcast. We were supposed to discuss the Michaelle Jean controversy, but events in Louisiana overtook it.

By the way, Silent Running - the folks behind SNN - have posted an explanation as to why their site has been down these past few days. (Long story short: their web hosting service screwed them over.)

Keep your fingers crossed

Authroities are now saying the death toll in New Orleans should be considerably less than 10,000:

Alarming predictions of as many as 10,000 dead in New Orleans may have been greatly exaggerated, with authorities saying Friday that the first street-by-street sweep of the swamped city revealed far fewer corpses than feared.

The encouraging news came as workers repairing New Orlean's system of levies and water pumps projected Friday that it will take a month to dry out the city ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Here's hoping. (Via Tim Blair)

Locked in a drowning city

I'm shedding no tears for Michael Brown, and in fact I'm wondering what justifies keeping him around at all if he can't handle Katrina. But this story proves, once again (and contrary to what some people* would have you believe) that there are many people aside from Brown responsible for this mess:

Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city.

An eyewitness account from two San Francisco paramedics posted on an internet site for Emergency Medical Services specialists says, "Thousands of New Orleaners were prevented and prohibited from self-evacuating the city on foot."

"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.

"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said.

The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.

Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.

He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx.

"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people.

"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."

But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city. [emphasis added]

InstaPundit has much more.

*yes, I know Sully throws in the odd "local officials were incompetent too" comment, but by and large his blog has been all-feds, all-the-time. When he found out that State officials kept the Red Cross out of the Superdome, he launched into another rant about the Bush Administration and Abu Ghraib.

Channelling Kos

Everybody's talking about this New York Times story, which outlines some of the jurisdictional problems which may have slowed the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. My short take: if true, the story shows that Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco had no friggin' idea what she was doing - and that this should have been obvious to President Bush, who nonetheless let political concerns keep him from federalizing the relief effort. If only Blanco had asked Bush to invoke the Insurrection Act, or if Bush had asked Blanco whether she wanted the Act invoked, perhaps some lives would have been saved.

Of course, had Bush done just that, the Kossacks and Atrioses of the world would still have gone completely apeshit. Wizbang is running a competition in which readers are asked to write their Kos post, from an alternate universe in which Bush sent in the troops immedately - and this one, in my opinion, is the runaway winner.

Brown kicked aside - but not out

Michael Brown has been relieved of his duties related to Hurricane Katrina, but he hasn't been fired as head of FEMA:

Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael Brown, who has been fiercely criticized over the agency's response to Hurricane Katrina, is being pulled off relief operations in the area, according to The Associated Press.

Asked if he was being made a scapegoat for a relief effort that has drawn criticism, Brown told AP: "By the press, yes. By the president, No."

Puts Fox News in perspective, doesn't it?

At a press conference protesting the Chinese President's visit to Canada, a Chinese "journalist" launched into a rambling defence of his country's human-rights record:

A news conference criticizing human-rights abuses in China turned into a forum for the other side Thursday when a Chinese government journalist rose to his employer's defence.
[...]
Wen-Zheng Hi, a reporter with the government-owned People's Daily in Beijing, said rich western democracies cannot impose their human-rights standards on a developing country such as China.

“Most important, you should allow them opportunities ... to have the basics. I just ask you whether you have put all these things into your consideration while you (criticize) Chinese human rights?”

Stupidity kills, too

Charlie Quidnunc's latest Rip & Read podcast has details about Louisiana state officials' refusal to let the Red Cross being food, water and supplies to the Superdome when thousands of people were stranded there. Unbelievable.

When patronage kills

I've been trying to avoid jumping on the fire-Mike-Brown bandwagon, partly because I think he's being put forth as a scapegoat when dozens of people are responsible for the mess in New Orleans, and partly because much of the bureaucratic nonsense which has hampered the recovery effort was almost certainly around before he took over as FEMA director. (Maybe it's just me, but I doubt a Bush appointee came up with this kind of thing.) But when you read Paul Campos' absolutely devastating profile of Brown in The New Republic, it's almost impossible to conclude that this man never should have gotten the job in the first place:

When Brown left the [International Arabian Horse Association] four years ago, he was, among other things, a failed former lawyer--a man with a 20-year-old degree from a semi-accredited law school who hadn't attempted to practice law in a serious way in nearly 15 years and who had just been forced out of his job in the wake of charges of impropriety. At this point in his life, returning to his long-abandoned legal career would have been very difficult in the competitive Colorado legal market. Yet, within months of leaving the IAHA, he was handed one of the top legal positions in the entire federal government: general counsel for a major federal agency. A year later, he was made its number-two official, and, a year after that, Bush appointed him director of FEMA.

It's bad enough when attorneys are named to government jobs for which their careers, no matter how distinguished, don't qualify them. But Brown wasn't a distinguished lawyer: He was hardly a lawyer at all. When he left the IAHA, he was a 47-year-old with a very thin resumé and no job. Yet he was also what's known in the Mafia as a "connected guy." That such a person could end up in one of the federal government's most important positions tells you all you need to know about how the Bush administration works--or, rather, doesn't. (via Galley Slaves)

I dunno. Maybe people have calmed down and when all of this is thoroughly investigated, it will be found that FEMA did everything it was supposed to. As I've written before, some screw-ups are pretty much inevitable when a disaster like this takes place. But with his background, the onus is going to be on Brown - and Bush - to prove he didn't botch the recovery from the greatest natural disaster in American history.

It makes you wonder how many more unqualified political hacks are holding crucial positions in the Bush Administration - and, for that matter, here in Canada.

Update: Time has uncovered some serious discrepencies in Brown's resume:

Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."

Ouch. (via Matt Welch at Hit & Run)

Gutfield strikes again

His latest: a "job application" for people who want to blog at the Huffington Post. Go partake of it, for it is good. (And if you haven't already done so, click on Gutfield's "bio" for a nice surprise.)

FOOTBALL!

The wait is over, starting 9PM Eastern tonight. One of the best football writers around, Peter King from Sports Illustrated, makes his predictions here.

I'm a Bears fan (yeah, I know, enough about my problems), but everyone will be cheering for the Saints this year.

The high road

I didn't think it was possible, but St. John's has a candidate for mayor even less mature than Andy Wells:

Mayoral candidate Ray O'Neill has defended his actions in defacing a campaign sign erected by Dennis O'Keefe, a candidate for Deputy Mayor. O'Neil admits writing the word liar on the sign. O'Neill locked horns with Bill Rowe on VOCM's Open Line over the incident. O'Neill maintains it was a joke.

O'Keefe describes such activity as almost evil and feels O'Neil may be responsible for defacing some of his other signs as well. O'Keefe calls it a sad situation but says he is reluctant to go to police on the matter.

It's not "almost evil", Dennis, it's just pathetic.

Where else but the Guardian?

The paper's "Eco Sounding" column points out a "silver lining" from Hurricane Katrina:

Whatever Hurricane Katrina's long-term effect on the way America thinks about global warming and oil dependency, it is probably going to make GM animal feed more expensive in Europe. Almost all US maize and soya goes through New Orleans and the port of Destrehan, and nothing is expected out for some time because of silting in the Mississippi. This should cheer up anti-GM activists in Britain who have been trying to persuade supermarkets to stick with non-GM supplies and not to accept produce that has been given GM feed.

If, God forbid, London is wiped out by a hurricane, the silver lining will be that we'll never have to read the Guardian again.

(via The Corner)

Beyond disgusting

Christian and Muslim fringe figures have said Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment against America, and now they're joined by one of Israel's best-known hatemongering kooks:

Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a former chief rabbi and the spiritual leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas movement, said on Wednesday that Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for U.S. President George W. Bush's support for Israel's Gaza pullout.

A Shas official, Tzvika Yaacobson, did not deny Yosef made the comments but said they were taken out of context and that people were misinterpreting the rabbi.

If anyone can describe any possible context in which these remarks wouldn't be hideously offensive, let me know. (via Norm Geras)

Where the money went

A story in The Washington Post provides some perspective on the controversy over funding cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers, and how it may or may not have contributed to the levee breach in New Orleans. (This Toyota Corolla driver, I'm sure, would simply dismiss the Post as part of the RightWingCorporateRepublicanMediaMachine.)

In Katrina's wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush's administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River -- now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project's congressional godfather -- for barge traffic that is less than forecast.
[...]
Louisiana's politicians have requested much more money for New Orleans hurricane protection than the Bush administration has proposed or Congress has provided. In the last budget bill, Louisiana's delegation requested $27.1 million for shoring up levees around Lake Pontchartrain, the full amount the Corps had declared as its "project capability." Bush suggested $3.9 million, and Congress agreed to spend $5.7 million.

But overall, the Bush administration's funding requests for the key New Orleans flood-control projects for the past five years were slightly higher than the Clinton administration's for its past five years. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the chief of the Corps, has said that in any event, more money would not have prevented the drowning of the city, since its levees were designed to protect against a Category 3 storm, and the levees that failed were already completed projects. Strock has also said that the marsh-restoration project would not have done much to diminish Katrina's storm surge, which passed east of the coastal wetlands.

A new answer to the question, "What's the stupidest thing you've ever read?"

If people like Richard Cohen have been reduced to making this kind of argument against John Roberts, I think Roberts can start picking out drapes for the Chief Justice's office already, 'cause they got nuthin':

I sometimes think the best thing that ever happened to me was, at the time, the worst: I flunked out of college. I did so for the usual reasons -- painfully bored with school and distracted by life itself -- and so I went to work for an insurance company while I plowed ahead at night school. From there I went into the Army, emerging with a storehouse of anecdotes. In retrospect, I learned more by failing than I ever would have by succeeding. I wish that John Roberts had a touch of my incompetence.

(via Captain's Quarters)

Update: MoveOn.org hits rock bottom. For now, anyway. (via InstaPundit)

Pardon?

I'm not a professional media critic or anything, but I think Zerb might want to re-word this one:

Has anybody seen any follow-up to the reports of rapes in the Superdome? Has there been any verification of those stories? ...If the tales are not true, it would be an even greater tragedy for the Katrina victims. Haven't they suffered enough? Must they also be tarred with such ugly notions of class and race? [emphasis added]

(Didn't I tell you this was going to happen?)

Still babbling

French conspiracy maniac Thierry Meyssan was interviewed by Iranian television last week. Even if his own countrymen finally get sick of him, Meyssan will always have a home on state-run broadcasters in the Middle East.

Conspiracy theorists often ask "who really benefitted" from the 9/11 attacks. (Their answer is usually a code word for "Jews".) But before 9/11, the likes of Thierry Meyssan and Michael Ruppert were obscure nobodies, and now they're underground cult heroes. By their own logic, such as it is, I think we have to look into what they knew and when they knew it.

Egypt's baby steps

After a lot of thought, I've decided that Egypt's sham "election" is better than no election at all. But just barely:

Amid allegations of vote buying and with huge numbers of voters arriving at polling stations bearing freshly printed papers with their names and the image of President Hosni Mubarak, Egyptians voted for their leader in a multi-candidate election for the first time yesterday.

Still, the country's first multi-candidate presidential elections fell far short of the open democratic process U.S. President George W. Bush was hoping for when he announced one of his administration's top priorities was to bring democracy to the Islamic world.

It's still possible to lose your own rigged election, but I don't think there's much doubt about Mubarak winning this one. There was a time when large anti-Mubarak rallies like this wouldn't have been allowed at all, so I guess the election is a start. But it's a small one.

Tribes

Bill Whittle has a new essay posted. What are you wasting time here for?

The conspiracy theories begin

I don't know what's more depressing: that the conspiracy theories about Hurricane Katrina have already begun, or that they're being promoted at perhaps the most widely-read political weblog. (via LGF)

They might be on the other end of the political spectrum, but the Kossacks and IndyMidiots are the new John Birchers. (Heck, on globlization and Iraq, it's hard to tell them apart.)

If you must deface a campaign sign, put some effort into it

Someone in St. John's did. Look closely. (via Ed Hollett)

Danny's on a roll

The Newfoundland's Conservative government - sorry, Progressive Conservative government - have opened up a huge lead over the Liberals. Admittedly, the fact that the Liberals have no leader right now probably helps:

After experiencing a significant decline in voter support in May (from essentially unsustainable levels of support in February), backing for the ruling Progressive Conservative Party has increased again in the past three months, according to the most recent survey conducted by Corporate Research Associates Inc. Presently, six in ten (61%, up from 55% in May 2005) decided Newfoundland and Labrador residents back the PCs. One in four (26%, down from 31%) residents support the Liberals, while nearly one in ten (8%, down from 11%) would vote for the NDP. The remaining 5 percent (compared with 3%) support none of these parties, do not plan to vote, or favour others. The number of Newfoundland residents who are undecided or refuse to state a preference has decreased by 3 percentage points to 22 percent.

PC leader Danny Williams’ personal popularity has also increased in the past three months, with six in ten (59%, up from 49%) NL residents naming Williams as their choice for Premier. More than one in ten (15%, down from 21%) back the next leader of the Liberal Party, while support for NDP leader Jack Harris is unchanged at 11 percent. Fifteen percent (down from 20% three months ago) like none of these leaders, prefer others, or have no definite opinion.

After we joined Canada in 1949, Joey Smallwood and the Liberals held power for 22 years. The PCs subsequently ran the government for 18 years, and then the Liberals for 14. We don't change governments very often down here, and unless Danny Williams does something spectacularly wrong, the Liberals are probably looking at official-opposition status for a very long time. (Sorry, Ed.)

The fine line between concern and hysteria

Andrew Sullivan just crossed it:

One thing we have to learn from this. If a terrorist attack strikes, you have to fend for yourself. We have no competent government to deal with these things; and, given Bush's track record for reforming his own administration, we are at serious risk for another three years. Build up your own food supplies; line up your own evacuation plans; care for your own sick and needy and old. The government is broken.

Yes, a lot of things have gone wrong. Yes, there have been many, many bureaucratic screw-ups, from the local level right up to the President's office. But for crying out loud, an major American city was completely flooded during a massive storm. Can anyone imagine a disaster of this magnitude, with so many agencies, departments and governments involved, in which there wouldn't be at least some of the horror stories Sullivan has posted to his blog?

People have the right to expect competence from their government. They do not have the right to expect miracles.

You're welcome

Anne Rice in the New York Times, quoted by Jim Geraghty in NRO: "To my country I want to say this: During this crisis you failed us. You looked down on us; you dismissed our victims; you dismissed us. You want our Jazz Fest, you want our Mardi Gras, you want our cooking and our music. Then when you saw us in real trouble, when you saw a tiny minority preying on the weak among us, you called us 'Sin City,' and turned your backs."

Amount of money raised for Hurricane Katrina relief, according to blogger Chuck Simmins: $465,769,985. Thank God most people in New Orleans are more grateful than Anne Rice. (Probably better writers, too.)

Bob Denver, R.I.P.

The man forever known as Gilligan - and yet another Simpsons guest star - has passed away at age 70.

Gilligan's Island wasn't high art by any means, but there are worse fates than making a TV show people still enjoyed forty years after it aired. (By the way, aside from Tina "Ginger" Louise, who has basically disavowed her involvement with the series, the only surviving cast members are Dawn "Mary Ann" Wells and Russell "Professor" Johnson - in other words, "the rest".)

Yahoo! and the Chinese

Shocking and disgusting news for people like myself, who regularly use Yahoo! services: according to Reporters Without Borders, the company is not only assisting the Chinese Communists in censoring the internet, it's helping that totalitarian government track down dissidents.

Like many other internet and technology companies, which talk about the wonderful world of "new media", Yahoo! appears more than willing to betray everything it supposedly stands for if it will help them get access to the lucrative Chinese market. Disgusting.

Katrina ist gut, ja?

Via the indispensible Davids Medienkritik, here's Philipp Mausshardt in the German newspaper Tageszeitung:

"Yet joy and sympathy beat simultaneously in my chest. I am, for example, joyful at the moment that the latest hurricane catastrophe hasn't again hit some poor land, but instead the richest country in the world.

I feel genuinely sorry for all the rest."

Mausshardt, it would appear, is carrying on the honourable, caring tradition of his German leftist predecessors.

The mob wants Brown

Andrew Sullivan lists several dozen bloggers, of all political persuasions, who want FEMA head Michael Brown fired for his handling of Hurricane Katrina. Brendan Loy, for one, makes a pretty damning case.

Still, in a way, I find myself feeling sorry for the guy. Not only does he have to deal with what might be the greatest natural disaster in American history, but Republicans and Democrats alike seem to have chosen him as the number-one scapegoat. He may indeed deserve much of the blame, but I simply cannot believe one man is responsible for a catastrophe of this magnitude. There are many, many people at fault here, and time will tell which heads should roll.

Moreover, there's a lot of evidence that President Bush knew - or should have known - that Brown was out of his depth when he hired the guy for this important position:

Michael D. Brown has been called the accidental director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, caricatured as the failed head of an Arabian horse sporting group who was plucked from obscurity to become President Bush's point man for the worst natural disaster in U.S. history.
[...]
If anything, Brown's political background has become a liability, leading to charges that he was given his job as patronage. He got his start in politics as an Oklahoma native with Allbaugh but ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1988, winning 27 percent of the vote. He has chaired the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority and served as a City Council member, examiner for the Oklahoma and Colorado supreme courts, and assistant city manager.

Allbaugh hired Brown after an acrimonious end to a nine-year stint as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. Former officials say he was forced out; a friend and lawyer of Brown's said he negotiated a settlement after withstanding numerous lawsuits against his enforcement of rules for judges and stewards.

Call me naive, but I believe Brown is doing his best here. It is the President who gave an unqualified individual the position, and it is the President who should take responsibility for it. For once. (And don't give me the "FEMA has always been a dumping ground for political hacks" argument, because from all indications, Clinton's FEMA director, James Lee Witt, was the right man for the job.)

Hear, Hear

Brendon from idontlikeyouinthatway.com:

I beg you, anyone in charge of anything, please pay attention to these numbers and accept what the rest of us have known for 5 years now: EVERYONE FUCKING HATES SEAN COMBS. I cannot stress this enough. Stop hiring him. I beg you. No one cares. No one listens to him. No one looks at Pepsi and thinks, "Yes, I want to drink what Puff Daddy drinks." I would personally come to your house and kick you all in the nuts, but I'm busy trying to find the people who keep hiring Snoop Dogg. Oh, but you're next. Don't think for a second that you're not next.

(Response in the comments section, punctuation unchanged: "dont diss snoop dogg. ...he's made great music for 10 years and even hustles companies like chrysler and nokia into giving him ads while he comes to awards shows carrying prostitutes by leashes. lets see you do that.")

Katrina's urban legends

According to The Guardian, many of the worst horror stories about the people stuck in the Superdome cannot be substantiated:

There were two babies who had their throats slit. The seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in the Superdome. And the corpses laid out amid the excrement in the convention centre.

New Orleans police have been unable to confirm the tale of the raped child, or indeed any of the reports of rapes, in the Superdome and convention centre.
[...]
Reports of the complete degradation and violent criminals running rampant in the Superdome suggested a crisis that both hastened the relief effort and demonised those who were stranded.

"There were no riots in Baton Rouge. There were no armed hordes." (via Captain's Quarters)

Many of these reports were enthusiastically promoted by "progressives" (like Randall Robinson) as evidence of the complete breakdown of society in Bush's Amerikkka. Now, sit back and marvel at the speed with which they officially become a tool of the corporate media machine to demonize African-Americans.

The greatest

After 1,549 career receptions for 22,895 yards and 197 touchdowns, Jerry Rice is finally hanging it up at age 42.

Football fans can get into long, anguished debates over who was the all-time greatest quarterback, running back or even field-goal kicker in NFL history, but no one - no one - seriously argues that there has ever been a greater wide reciever. And in the Moss/Owens era, it's all the more impressive that Rice did it all with real class and decency.

Whom to blame?

A comprehensive list of people, organizations and/or natural forces allegedly responsible for Hurricane Katrina has been compiled here. By and large, people are blaming the very people they despised before Hurricane Katrina struck, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

(via The House of Wheels)

Bad ideas never die

According to a new poll, almost a majority of Canadians favor nationalizing the oil industry:

Almost half of Canadians wanted to see petroleum resources and oil companies nationalized as fuel prices hit record levels, a new poll suggests.
[...]
In the Leger poll, which was provided to The Canadian Press, 49 per cent of respondents wanted petroleum resources nationalized while 43 per cent said they would like to see the same fate for oil companies.

Quebec led in support for nationalization of oil companies, with 61 per cent in favour, followed by the Atlantic provinces (46 per cent). Alberta was most opposed at 59 per cent, followed by the Prairies (49 per cent), B.C. 46 per cent and Ontario, 41 per cent.

If the survey question had noted the astronomical cost involved in pulling off a scheme like this, I suspect the results might have been somewhat different. Well, maybe not in Quebec.

Update: here in Newfoundland, where gas prices went up over 30 cents per litre this weekend, a consumer group says the price will fall around 11.5 cents some time today. Here's hoping.

New Reviews

A couple of reviews recently posted to Blogcritics.org: Denis Boyles' book Vile France, and the Man Show season three DVD set.

Back again

When I left on Friday, I figured I'd start blogging about Hurricane Katrina right away when I returned. But I'll need some time to go through the blogs and catch up on what I missed while I was gone. I am glad to see that most of the people stuck at the Superdome have finally been brought to safety - and I'm distressed to see liberal blogs saying this mess was all President Bush's fault, while conservative blogs say the blame rests entirely with Democratic officials at the State and local level. There's plenty of blame to go around - and not just among politicians, considering the way some people in New Orleans chose (yes, chose) to behave - and I don't think "I know you are, but what am I?" should be the official motto of the blogosphere.

In the meantime, I'm thrilled to see contributions from last week's blogburst topping the million-dollar mark. ($691 of it came from readers of this site, which was far more than my most optimistic projections.) Thanks to all the bloggers - whether they share my politics or not - who used their sites to help the people of Louisiana and Mississippi in their time of need.

Before I go...

I'm going to see my girlfriend in Halifax for the Labour Day weekend, so there won't be any new posting for the next few days. I hate to abandon the blog at this important time, but there are thousands of other blogs out there which seem to have the Hurricane pretty well covered. (The controversial Michelle Malkin has been a standout.)

I'll be back on Monday evening with, I'm sure, many more thoughts about this catastrophe and our response to it. Have a good weekend - and God Bless everyone giving their time and energy to help out down there. Watching from so far away, I feel so helpless not being able to just drop by and lend a hand.

A few song lyrics before I leave...

The Allman Brothers Band:
I’m on my way to New Orleans this mornin’,
Leaving out of Nashville, Tennessee,
They’re always having a good time down on the bayou,
Lord, them delta women think the world of me.

Bob Dylan:
I had a job in the great north woods
Working as a cook for a spell
But I never did like it all that much
And one day the ax just fell.
So I drifted down to New Orleans
Where I happened to be employed
Workin’ for a while on a fishin’ boat
Right outside of Delacroix.
But all the while I was alone
The past was close behind,
I seen a lot of women
But she never escaped my mind, and I just grew
Tangled up in blue.

The Grateful Dead:
Busted, down on Bourbon Street, set up, like a bowlin’ pin.
Knocked down, it gets to wearin’ thin. they just won’t let you be, oh no.

Gary U.S. Bonds:
Come on everybody take a trip with me
Down the Mississippi down to New Orleans.
The honey suckle is bloomin on the honeysuckle vine
And love is blomin there all the time.
Every Southern belle is a Mississippi queen,
Down the Mississippi down in New Orleans.

Johnny Horton:
In eighteen-fourteen we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississipp'
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British in a town of New Orleans
We fired our guns and the British kept a comin'
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

Quote of the Day

Hand-painted sign on a boarded-up New Orleans rug shop: "Don't try [looting]. I am sleeping inside with a big dog, an ugly woman, two shotguns and a claw hammer"

(via The Corner)

Bloggers do their part

According to The Truth Laid Bear, $237,288.00 was raised in yesterday's blogburst for Hurricane Katrina relief. InstaPundit readers donated over $32,000.00, and three other blogs raised over $15,000.00 apiece.

Thanks to anyone who donated to the Red Cross, or any other charity, based on what you read at this site. (If you did, log it in here, or send me an e-mail to let me know.)

Updated Update: according to the chart, readers of this site raised $393.00 $483.00, including my own contribution. You guys rock.

Overlooked heroes

Another good point from an InstaPundit reader in Mississippi: power workers, without whom society as we know it would collapse, are always there to do dangerous, essential work after every major disaster. They deserve a lot more credit than they get.

Some good news

Fats Domino, who had been missing for days, has been found alive and safe. (Unfortunately, some other music legends, like Allen Toussaint - believed to be in the Superdome - and Irma Thomas are still unaccounted for.)

No money for the red states

Another compassionate leftist says he won't give a penny to support Katrina relief efforts, 'cause it's all Bush's fault. (via Chrenkoff)

To be fair, he's in the minority. Left-wing bloggers are organizing their own campaign for hurricane relief, and they deserve our thanks and praise for doing so. Everyone with a blog, regardless of his or her ideological leanings, should be using it as best they can to help.

Update: and of course, you knew it was just a matter of time before America's most respected hatemongering freak starting mouthing off about it:

Speaking to a large crowd in South Philadelphia tonight, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan suggested that the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina was divine punishment for the violence America had inflicted on Iraq.

His remarks were enthusiastically received.

Yes, God was so mad at whitey that he decided to smite a city in which the population is 70% black. Somebody bring me my clue bat.

Update II: and while I'm at it, these "pro-lifers" deserve a few whacks with said clue bat, too.

Caught napping

Tim Naftali, in Slate, savages the Bush Administration for its painfully inadequate response to Katrina:

The president's statement this afternoon set the tone. Rather than direct the U.S. military to immediately assist the thousands of people without food or water in the city center, Bush assured the nation that expected gasoline shortages would be temporary and that his father and former President Clinton were ready to pass the tin can to ensure private-sector support for rebuilding New Orleans. As people began dying around the Convention Center, and Mayor Ray Nagin resorted to issuing a pathetic SOS over CNN, Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff spoke empathetically of the suffering of the people in New Orleans. But somehow he seemed proud that 72 hours after the hurricane hit, only 2,800 National Guardsmen had come to the city. The number is about to reach 12,000 by tomorrow. That is awfully late for the people stranded there. Yet Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who is commanding the military component of Washington's response, pleaded for patience from the people of New Orleans, promising that the U.S. Army was "building the capability" to help them.

Building the capability? How is it possible that with the fourth anniversary of 9/11 almost upon us, the federal government doesn't have in hand the capability to prepare for and then manage a large urban disaster, natural or man-made? In terms of the challenge to government, there is little difference between a terrorist attack that wounds many people and renders a significant portion of a city uninhabitable, and the fallout this week from the failure of one of New Orleans' major levees. Indeed, a terrorist could have chosen a levee for his target. Or a dirty-bomb attack in New Orleans could have caused the same sort of forced evacuation we are seeing and the widespread sickness that is likely to follow. (via Bob Tarantino)

This is a very rude awakening for those of us who endorsed Bush last year for national-security reasons. (Not that the state or city governments, both run by Democrats, have covered themselves in glory, either.) Even bearing in mind the difficulties caused by maniacs shooting at rescue choppers and evacuation convoys, it is nothing short of scandalous that so many poor, vulnerable people are still waiting around without adequate food or water.

Update: AP commentator Ron Fournier:

Both the Bush and Clinton administrations proposed budgets that low-balled the needs. Local politicians grabbed whatever money they could and declared victory. And the public didn't exactly demand tax increases to pay for flood-control and hurricane-protection projects.

How could Washington spend $231 million on a bridge to nowhere - and not find $42 million for hurricane and flood projects in New Orleans? It's a matter of power and politics.
[...]
Robin Lovin, ethics professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said it's too convenient to blame one branch of government when they are all, at some level, failing people. From Watergate to Clinton's impeachment, governmental institutions have disappointed the public.

"Bush, Congress, the mayor - each of them are symptoms of a bigger problem, that we don't have accountability for disasters or challenges of this scale," Lovin said. "That's all the public wants in trying times - accountability."

That's what frustrates me the most about this madness: no one - not the Bush Administration, not the state, not the city - seems to be accepting any responsibility for saving these people. The only people who've risen to the challenge are ordinary Americans, giving their time, effort, money and even risking their lives to help the people of New Orleans.

Update II: on the other hand, an InstaPundit reader who works in the emergecy-management field says federal and city officials down there are doing an outstanding job under the circumstances. And Reynolds himself notes, "disaster relief isn't like calling Domino's. ...Bridges are out, roads are blocked, boats are sunk, and all sorts of other infrastructure is down. Aid can't get through in quantity until that's fixed, at least somewhat. In a situation like this, the first week you get a trickle, the second week you get enough, and the third week you get pretty much all you want. We're still in week one."

Update III: what can I say about this?

Federal Emergency Management Director Michael Brown told CNN that federal officials were unaware of the crowds at the convention center until Thursday, despite the fact that city officials had been telling people for days to gather there.

Update IV: you know, I'm no expert in these matters, but do you think these might have helped a little?

Corporate donations

A long list here. Several companies, including AT&T, Bayer and New York Life, are matching employee contributions dollar-for-dollar.

Rock bottom

Just after 9/11, Michael Moore's immediate instinct was to bemoan the fact that the terrorists struck cities in which most people voted against George W. Bush. The outcry was immediate, and eventually Moore was shamed into quietly excising these comments from his website.

Four years later, leftist blogger "Bradblog" admits he was on the verge of starting an online campaign against helping the victims of Hurricane Katrina, because Louisiana and Mississippi are "red" states. At the last minute, he says, he changed his mind because New Orleans went mostly for Kerry. In the Kos/Dean Democratic Party of 2005, I just can't see as many liberals getting upset at him. (I'm not linking to this asshole, but here's the LGF post.)

President Bush's handling of this disaster has been slow at best and incompetent at worst. (Heck, I just saw Bill Clinton on CNN defending Bush administration's relief efforts better than Bush himself has.) When things settle down, I think his approval ratings will be even worse. But with the likes of "Bradblog" on the loose, I don't think the Democrats' numbers will have gotten any better.

Update: a classic example of projection. (Fortunately, it was on Air America, so it's not like anyone heard it.)

Unspeakable

I can't even begin to comprehend this:

New Orleans' Charity Hospital halted efforts to evacuate its patients after it came under sniper fire, according to Dr. Tyler Curiel, who witnessed the incidents.

"We were coming in from a parking deck at Tulane Medical Center, and a guy in a white shirt started firing at us," Curiel said. "The National Guard (troops), wearing flak jackets, tried to get a bead on this guy."
[...]
Charity Hospital has no electricity, no water and the only food available is couple of cans of vegetables and graham crackers.

Evacuations by boat were halted after armed looters threatened medics, and overturned one of their boats.

A happy anniversary

It was lost amid the horrible news from Louisiana and Iraq, but Poland's Solidarity trade union was founded 25 years ago yesterday. Anne Appelbaum had a report from Gdansk, showing that Poles are slowly but surely getting used to democracy and capitalism. (via Mick Hartley)

Interestingly, yesterday was also the eighth anniversary of Princess Diana's death. Funny how rapidly that fell off the radar, isn't it?

You know it's coming

How long before Iranian state media reports that "4,000 Jews mysteriously fled New Orleans just before Hurricane Katrina struck"?

The sickest, the oldest, the poorest, the youngest

Glenn Reynolds posts this depressing report from New Orleans:

This is sort of the nightmare scenario that everybody was really worried about, but the problem for New Orleans is that everybody who had their health, had money and had a car, they left. Okay, so we have probably 100,000 people trapped in the city right now, maybe 50,000 or 60,000 people in the Superdome who are there without electricity, without flushing toilets, without food, without water. And they are people who had to walk over there or take a bus, because they didn't have a car to get out.

There are people in nursing homes, there's people in these little hospitals all over the place.
[...]
So who's left behind in New Orleans right now, you are talking about tens of thousands of people who are left behind, and those are the sickest, the oldest, poorest, the youngest, the people with disabilities and the like, and the plan was that everybody should leave. Well, you can't leave if you're in a hospital. You can't leave if you're a nurse. You can't leave if you are a patient. You can't leave if you're in a nursing home. You can't leave if you don't have a car. All of these things. They didn't have - there was no plan for that.

We knew Hurricane Katrina was coming quite some time before it struck. Soon, we will need to know why the federal, state and municipal governments had no plan to get thousands of its poorest citizens out of this disaster area. (My first thought: a big city like New Orleans must have hundreds of buses, so were they being used to get people out of there this past weekend?)

Update: David Brooks compares Hurricane Katrina to other catastrophic natural disasters which have struck the United States, and the political fallout which resulted from each.

Update II: another firsthand account of the chaos here.

Hurricane Katrina blogburst

Today, hundreds of bloggers are asking their readers to donate to the relief effort. I'm blogging for the Canadian Red Cross, which is now accepting tax-deductible contributions from Canadians to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Donation information here.

A couple of years ago, I asked my readers to donate to the Red Cross to help the victims of flooding which struck Badger, Newfoundland, and many of my American readers gave generously. I'm sure most Canadians are ready to extend their support to our friends in Louisiana and Mississippi at this dreadful time. (Yes, there are a few soulless pricks who say they won't give a penny to help the eeeevil Yanks, but we shouldn't let them get all the attention.)

More details about the blogburst, and information on where American readers can donate, here.

Technorati tags: flood aid, Hurricane Katrina

Update: Blogcritics has also started an appeal for funding, with proceeds going to the American Red Cross.

Update II: if you buy Mark Steyn's The Face of the Tiger or Mark Steyn From Head to Toe from his online bookstore today, he'll donate the full proceeds of sale to Mercy Corps. A very generous gesture - and you know the books are going to be good.