I’ve let the lawn grow out this week. It was one of the lessons I had from Isabel–the longer the grass and other foliage, the more water that will be trapped / kept out of the soil when these big storms come (and thus, the less change of landslides).
I’ve also got the generator set up in the garage. 5,000 watts of power for the house when (if) the power goes out.
But for Hanna, it looks like it won’t be passing over us. But Ike and Josephine are coming soon enough.
Republicans don't believe the 'perfect family' photo either, but don't necessarily care.
Earlier in the primary campaign season, Hillary Clinton was bringing in close to half of the African American vote, she made a bit of a gaffe saying the LBJ was responsible for getting the civil rights bills passed, not necessarily just MLK. This led to an incredible backlash amongst the African American community who were livid that Hillary had diminished the role of one of their heros. Obama’s African American support exploded to near unanimous levels, and these votes were instrumental in securing him the general nomination.
The ‘gaffe’ will go down in history as being a watershed moment in the Democratic primary, costing Hillary the election.
And now the Democrats are doing it all over again with Sarah Palin.
It’s an interesting parallel and one that the ‘open mouth, closed minds’ cannot see. The media and the left are up in arms about this that and the other thing as it relates to Sarah Palin. Many of the attacks on Palin are based on the ‘boogeyman’ caricature that the left holds about conservatives, especially religious conservatives. In their view, all conservatives are hyper-judgmental individuals who will scream ‘eek’ at the first sign of hypocrisy (as they see it). The reality is, of course, far different, but with the left doing battle with their own boogeyman they can’t really see beyond their own misperceptions.
The reality that is there but invisible to them is that many on the conservative side see what’s happening to Sarah Palin’s personal life as yet another example of ‘things that happen’ in life. That she failed to live up to the morals she espouses simply makes the need to fight for them all the harder, not (as many on the left believe) a reason to abandon them.
The second, far more important fact is that the attacks, getting rather personal, wildly inaccurate, or even with a hint of sexism are galvanizing the core of the Republican party. People who were going to go to the ballot and hold there nose and vote for McCain (and there were many) are now going to be volunteering at Get out the Vote functions and passing out literature to their friends. They’ll be on the ground, e*n*e*r*g*i*z*e*d in a way that no speech by McCain himself could have done. So visceral is the hatred of the way Sarah Palin is being treated by the media (enemy #2 to the Republican base) and the smug ‘far left’ (enemy #1 to the Republican base) that the continued pounding of Palin is recreating Hillary’s ‘LBJ/MLK’ moment with the Republicans that just may mean the difference come November.
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The New York Times is reporting that Georgian military officials are already planning for the next war, with a military shopping list that includes some higher technology weapons. Pentagon officials are reviewing the lists but have yet to make any decisions just yet.
Defense officials in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, said that at a minimum they hoped to re-equip the army’s four existing brigades with modern equipment, and increase the size of the country’s air force. Georgia’s military now includes 33,000 active-duty personnel.
Georgia also hopes to acquire an integrated air-defense system that covers the country’s entire airspace, to arm its land forces with modern antiarmor rockets, and to overhaul the military’s communication equipment, much of which was rendered useless by Russian jamming during the brief war.
Of course if they had just blown up the tunnel they might have a better time at things trapping many Russian forces on the other side of the border.
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These wind speed projections show it’s going to basically suck in a few days over the house. We’ve had four power outages this year > 6 hours and I’m fed up (one was 36 hours). I suspect this weekend is going to mega-suck which means it is time for a generator.
Now I just have to figure a way to get it home from the hardware store.
It’s going to be a crazy week for Hurricane hunters. While Gustav is turning into rain clouds, Hanna is spinning around and will be quickly followed by Hurricane Ike and then what is currently known as Tropical Depression 10. We could see some machine gun hurricanes striking the US over the next few weeks.
It's going to be busy.
You may remember a few years ago a Russian plane crashed because an air traffic controller in Switzerland issued some incorrect orders. You may also remember that a Russian father who lost his children in the crash travelled to the tower later and slashed to death the air traffic controller he found. Victor Kaloyev was his name, and he served eight years for that murder before being released and named a ‘Hero of Ossetia’.
When the Georgia crisis got underway, Victor took his sense of ‘revenge’ and drove into Ossetia to take part in the battle.
“You have to understand,” he told a reporter from the German newspaper Die Zeit after returning from the brief war. “Whoever hits me, is hit back.” The Caucasus is ruled by the principle of justified blood revenge: no-one trusts the police, the courts or the state. Justice is personal.
And the EU has been busy issuing demands and statements of new action against this backdrop. One does not have to wonder very hard to realize how ‘effective’ the EU’s statements will be in this sort of world.
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