Suspect Device: The Blog

Not that I put much stock in meteorological icthyomancy this far out, but with the storm tracking west, it would sure be a hell of a thing to send people out of New Orleans to where the god damned thing looks like it’s headed. Hmm.

Can one be too proactive?

Classy.

1) The “Obama is inexperienced” argument is over. Palin has local-level experience and one and a half years as Governor.

2) If Hawaii is too foreign for America, then so is Alaska. She married an Eskimo! She eats Moose! Etc.

3) She made her name ratting on unethical pols but is under investigation by the Alaska legislature. Sweet.

4) Her youth throws McCain’s age into relief.

5) He picked someone young and inexperienced and just barely into a first term as governor. Better put an ice pack on that slap, Bobby.

There are moments when everything changes.

but feel it, and do something: New Orleans, 3 A.K.

The TImeline

Kevin Allman: …Oh, and people too.

Greek columns on the stage? Why that’s UPPITY:

Today, workers at Invesco Field are putting the final touches on the newest wonder of the modern political world — The Temple of Obama (“The Barackopolis”). It is upon this pulpit that Barack Obama will tomorrow night address thousands of screaming, adoring fans.

There may be some confusion among the press about the venue and appropriate dress code for Barack Obama’s big speech. To help out, we wanted to provide the following tips on appropriate attire. The toga may have gone out of style centuries ago, but after Obama’s temple speech tomorrow night, they’re sure to be flying off the racks.

Great line of attack. Way to engage the issues. Honest to Christ, how do you people feed yourselves without jamming the fork into your brain?

Gustav Threatens GOP Convention Plans:

“The Republicans can’t seem to get a break when it comes to August and when it comes to the weather,” said Rove, a FOX News analyst. “I know this is being thought a lot about in Washington and at the White House and discussed and I suspect they will monitor it carefully and figure out what to do.”

Marketing Genius:

teve Warshak, founder of the company responsible for “Enzyte,” has been sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $93,000, says the AP. U.S. District Judge S. Arthur Spiegel also ordered the company, along with other defendants, to forfeit more than $500 million that it bilked from consumers.

According to federal prosecutors the scam involved preying on customer’s reluctance to admit that they had ordered the “male enhancement” pills. Customers ordered the pills, but were unable to cancel or get a refund. A former VP of the company testified that Warshak required customers to provide notarized documents from a doctor proving that they had small genitals in order to get a refund.

Texas still leads nation in rate of uninsured residents | Dallas Morning News:

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain’s health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

“So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime,” Mr. Goodman said. “The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

“So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved.”

McCain’s Prickly TIME Interview - TIME:

[Your] campaign today is more disciplined, more traditional, more aggressive. From your point of view, why the change?
I will do as much as we possibly can do to provide as much access to the press as possible.

But beyond the press, sir, just in terms of …
I think we’re running a fine campaign, and this is where we are.

Do you miss the old way of doing it?
I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Really? Come on, Senator.
I’ll provide as much access as possible …

In 2000, after the primaries, you went back to South Carolina to talk about what you felt was a mistake you had made on the Confederate flag. Is there anything so far about this campaign that you wish you could take back or you might revisit when it’s over?
[Does not answer.]

Do I know you? [Says with a laugh.]
[Long pause.] I’m very happy with the way our campaign has been conducted, and I am very pleased and humbled to have the nomination of the Republican Party.

You do acknowledge there was a change in the campaign, in the way you had run the campaign?
[Shakes his head.]

Rising Hegemon: Unleash Pat Robertson:

You know seriously, if there is a God this is an indication he has a wicked sense of humor with Gustav set to hit New Orleans on the third anniversary of Katrina and while the GOP is having its convention.

But there are people in this area that REALLY don’t need to be in on the joke. Let’s hope it weakens and then dissipates.

Yeah, we don’t need to be in on your little joke.

And it’s people “who”, not people “that”. Use “who” as your complemtizer or introduction to a restrictive clause involving flesh and blood people with homes, lives, loved ones. Just a tip. Asshole.

Shorter Beck: I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you…

the dept. of ethereal visions strikes again

Via Oyster.

Dear Corps officials, (as well as government representatives, New Orleanians, and media representatives),

I am writing you to make a request. In light of the possible effects of Hurricane/Tropical Storm Gustav upon the Greater New Orleans area, I would ask that the Corps and its partners at LSU and the Universtity of North Carolina make public the results of storm surge model runs which are (or soon will be) created as part of the Lake Pontchartrain Forecast System (LPFS).

As I understand it, the Corps has contracted with UNC’s Institute of Marine Sciences (contracts W912P8-06-P-0334 (from 2006, for $279,117) and W912P8-08-P-0082 (from earlier in 2008, for $101,512)) and their partners at LSU to provide forecasts of surge levels within Lake Pontchartrain when tropical systems are approaching New Orleans. This enables the Corps to determine when to lower the gates at the three interim closure structures along the Lake Pontchartrain south shore. The system is explained on a few webpages at LSU:

http://www.cct.lsu.edu/site38.php
http://www.cct.lsu.edu/~estrabd/LPFS/
http://www.cct.lsu.edu/~estrabd/LPFS/distributed-lpfs.pdf
http://www.cct.lsu.edu/~gallen/Preprints/CS_Allen07a.pre.pdf

In light of the Corps’ “12 Actions for Change” specifically Action Number 9, “Effectively Communicate Risk,” it would be tremendous goodwill gesture to the public across the country to know what the Corps knows about the surge risk before the storm makes landfall.

Doing so would be in the same spirit that allows the National Hurricane Center and other organizations to make the results of hurricane track and intensity model runs available to public. Doing so allows government agencies and members of the public to plan more effectively, and allows the media to get more accurate information out to the public as they plan.

As part of your public outreach during the coming days, I urge you to upload the model results to your website so that everyone can be apprised of this vital information which will inform your decisions.

Best regards,

Matt McBride

Sometimes I wonder. “Alex with E”, you’ve earned yourself a place on The List:

I’m sorry, I think you’re not thinking it through. I don’t think anyone is standing around with their fingers crossed going “C’mon, c’mon. Category 5 right on New Orleans.”

It appears more to me as a militant sort of thinking. In campaigns, commanders sometimes have to deliberately send people to die. Yes, that’s a very hard thing. The good commanders are scarred by those decisions. They remember every person they sent off to die. Then you have the bad commanders, who laugh it up at the officers’ club and don’t think for a single minute about those dead men, except when they mouth words about them during election campaigns and press events.

And a good commander understands that he’ll have to do it again one day. Send some mother’s son off to die. And he still does it. Not because he likes to kill. Not because it’s exciting or fun. But because sometimes, it really has to be that hard.

A hurricane is going to hit somewhere. If it hits East Nowhere, Texas, it’ll get about four stories in the press and that’s it. If it hits New Orleans — the hard choice — it will deal a devastating blow to the Republican Party IF IF IF the Democratic Party can be a good commander.

Bluntly:
Yes, this is a political time.

No, no one is sitting around HOPING that New Orleans gets flooded again.

Gustav’s got to come to shore somewhere though. So the “I hope it doesn’t hit N.O.” is a little illogical. And in the vein of how people tell you not to mention something because that might make it happen: a form of superstition.

IF Gustav comes to shore at New Orleans, the Republicans will be having their cheer-filled, party-down, fancy-food events during a recreation of one of the major natural disasters to have hit this country in living memory.

RIGHT THERE. RIGHT THERE, that’s the election. Cue the narrator: “While the Republicans gorged themselves on caviar, Hurricane Gustav swept over New Orleans, a city devastated only a few years earlier by Republican incompetence and greed.” [Go to clip of revelers shrieking. Of McCain eating. Of Bush reading “My Pet Goat.”]

I’m sorry. I realize everyone’s emotional about New Orleans. But can we all stop tearing up and emoting? New Orleans got drowned because no one in power gave two shits. The worst thing that could happen is for that hurricane to veer off. New Orleans, and the entire country, needs progressive leadership. New energy sources, new politics, universal health care. An end to the war in Iraq.

Obama has to win or we’re not going to get it. (Even if he wins, we might not get it, but he’s the only game in town.) It’s that simple. If he loses, we’re all going to lose. And that means New Orleans too. This isn’t a political theory or anything else. Images ALWAYS win elections. And by a bizarre twist, the most devastating possible images for the Republican Party are about to arrive.

I’m sorry that means more grief for New Orleans, but the Democratic Party has to stop being so non-political.

Look, since Kos and his minions agreed to never trouble our doors, can you all just stop talking about us? Because a) you’re not helping anyone or anything and b) you’re assholes.

EDIT: Kevin Allman just dropped this science in an email:

Honestly, a lot of the Kos folk are no different than the lunatics at the Project for a New American Century, salivating over the thought of another terrorist attack to get everyone in line behind the
Republicans.

Yup.

God found.