Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Mubarak bans independent poll monitors; Jimmy Carter welcomed

BSI (Cairo)-The Government of Hasni Mubarak today banned independent poll monitors from inspecting the upcoming September 7 elections in Egypt. Many fear that this move means that the Mubarak government will engage in rampent fraud at the polls to endure a Mubarek victory, but in a move to reassure the West, Mubarak has personally invited Nobel Peace Prize campaigner and winner Jimmy Carter to oversee the election process.

"We want to reassure the West that everything here in Egypt is on the up and up," said a government spokesperson. "The best way to do this is to invite Jimmy Carter to Egypt to certify the legitimacy of our elections."

Carter, through his Carter Foundation, has monitored such elections as the 1999 Cherokee Nation election and the 2004 Venezuela election, ensuring that the Democratic process is carried out in the will of the people.

(This post is satire. Carter has not been invited to oversee the Egyptian election. Yet.)

Pets and disasters

What would you do about your pets in the face of impending disasters? Hurricane Katrina is rife with stories of people refusing to leave their pets behind, or being severely grieved at having to do so. As for my household, someone (I won't say who) refuses to take shelter during tornado warnings until she has the cat. I do love the tempermental Delilah Cat, but when their is debris falling out of the sky and she refuses to get out from under the bed, my instinct for self preservation kicks into overdrive and I'm inclined to let her (the cat) figure out her own survival. The unnamed individual in my household doesn't seem to get as worried, though, and insists on saving the pet, which makes me extremely antsy. What about you? What is your threshold for making sure your pet is saved? Would you put your own life at risk as many have in the Gulf Coast?

Monday, September 05, 2005

Forbes: Oil bubble to pop

I've been of this opinion for a while. If you look at oil prices and what is causing them to rise, it has mostly been things that freak investors out, like bad political news here or there, not news of actual demand increases. This is what Steve Forbes had to say about it:

He said factors such as inflation and increased demand for oil from China and India accounted for only a small part of the price hike from $US25-30 a barrel three years ago.

"The rest of it is sheer bubble speculation," he said.

Mr Forbes, who was speaking at the opening of the Forbes Global CEO Conference in Sydney yesterday, said the higher the oil price rose, the harder it would eventually crash, creating more pain for hedge fund managers and their clients.






"I don't think it's going to go to $US100 but if it does the crash is going to be even more spectacular," he said.

"It will make the hi-tech bubble look like a picnic -- this thing is not going to last."

He predicted that oil would fall to $US30-35 a barrel within a year.

I concur.

Farewell to summer

As the sun set on the capitol, so too did it begin to set on another all too short summer in Wisconsin.

Jessica Andrews at Taste of Madison

Jessica Andrews, a country musician I had never heard before, was the main performer Saturday night at Taste of Madison. Here are a few pics for those of you who are fans.

She put on a good, if short, show.

Taste of Madison

It's been a busy weekend thus far. It started for us with Taste of Madison on Saturday. The food was great, especially the Dragon Balls (not pictured). The entertainment was great. But the beverage prices were outrageous.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

William Rehnquist 1924-2005

I shouldn't be given his illness, but I'm a little stunned at the passing of Chief Justice William Rehnquist. I'm saddened by Rehnquist's passing, and I hope that his opponents can hold off for at least a few days before they start jumping on him. Chief Justice Rehnquist, rest in eternal peace.

Huffington and her merry band of fools

A person could waste their life fisking the idiots at the Huffington Post. This week in particular, the site was over run by childishness, foolishness, and idiocy. So rather than waste my time on things like Harry Shearer's idea the we shoot polluted New Orleans water into space, I'm just going to stop reading the HuffPo. I should've have stopped reading it the day after it debuted.

Helping the country

We are going to Taste of Madison this afternoon. I've had a few twinges of guilt about going out to over-enjoy food and drink this weekend given the suffering in the Gulf Coast, but I have since justified it. Like after 9-11, Katrina caused a regionalized hit to the U.S. economy. It is up to the rest of us in the country to not only contribute aid to the Gulf Coast, but to also keep the economy humming by continuing to live life as we normally would. So I am going to do my part by pouring scads of money into the local economy this weekend.

Friday, September 02, 2005

Creepy

Umm, I've got a huge case of the heeby-jeebies. Someone in Greece today did a Google search for my URL and "nude".

To rebuild or not to rebuild, it's not much of a question

Should New Orleans be rebuilt? Probably not. The city can not be made safe, period. Unlike an L.A. or a San Francisco, New Orleans just existing puts itself in danger as city and nearby marshlands are sinking every year. Additionally, every terrorist in the world now knows how to kill hundreds of thousands of people very quickly-by destroying New Orleans' levees. And eventually another hurricane will come along and do this all over again. Should and will are two very different propositions, though.

New Orleans will be rebuilt, and rebuilt right where she stands. It is almost a practical impossibility that it won't be. First, the money involved in clean up is not an issue. That money will need to be spent whether New Orleans is rebuilt or not. And if it isn't rebuilt, the area it now occupies will have to be flooded. Leaving that city there, as is, unhibatited and under water, would be a huge environemental disaster. So either way, you have to drain the city and clean it up. Now, if you rebuild it, your can recoup the investment to some extent. If you do not rebuild, you must then go in and remove most of the buildings and much of the infrastructure so it is not further environmentally harmful. As is, some buildings will be salvageable, and the infrastructure repairable. So removing the city will probably be more expensive than rebuilding it, with no hope of recouping that money through future economic activity in the area. In addition to all of the work involved in removing the city, you have to buy out private property owners. As is American nature, some will fight the buy out, and the court costs will have to be tacked onto the bill. And politically, abandoning New Orleans will be a non-starter.

New Orleans is a cursed city. It will be rebuilt, but it will be destroyed again someday by man or by nature. The only way it won't be rebuilt is if, God forbid, another category 4 or 5 storm tracks into the city this fall and causes more horrific damage to the levees. But wisdom says we should probably rethink the idea of New Orleans for the sake of future city inhabitants.

Forethought

Jeff Wagner on 620 WTMJ was discussing the Katrina relief effort today, and the one caller said mentioned forethought. This picture shows that there certainly wasn't enough of that. Each one of those buses represent what, 50 people that could have been evacuated prior to the storm? Even more than that with multiple trips? It would have been an enormous cost to do so, and certainly not recommended for every hurricane, but when a category 4 or 5 storm is bearing down on you and your levee walls are only rated at category 3, it may have been justified. Had their been enough forethought to have a plan in place to evacuate the poor and ill to other inland cities.

Another caller who evacuated New Orleans brought up an interesting point. Nothing could really get into New Orleans once the evacuation order was given because the roads going into the city were all made into northbound lanes. When the caller got a little further out, he saw convoys of trucks heading towards the Mississippi coast in prepartion for the repair and relief efforts of a storm that had not even arrived yet. For New Orleans, with only two main roads in and out of town, this may have been the only choice in order to get people out quick. But for a city and a state that has known the vulnerability of the area for years upon years, that's not an excuse.

For the record...

This is sad if true, but it probably isn't true. People are likely hungry in New Orleans, but they aren't anywhere near starving after 4 days without food. I've had flus that have led me to go that long without eating.

Flotilla

From the moment I heard on Tuesday that the levee had broken in New Orleans, I had expected someone, be it the Mayor, Governort, someone to ask for volunteers with small boats to come to New Orleans to help evacuate people. I had visions of the British flotilla that evacuated trapped British troops from Dunkirk. During times of crisis, you sometimes have to let people put themselves at risk to help others.

Update
See the comments section for why a private flotilla was impractical.

Bill Clinton, team player

Head over to Captain's Quarters and read about Bill Clinton's performance with Bush 41 on CNN. Clinton seems to understand that carping on the government isn't going to get time sensitive rescue and relief efforts done any faster. It's nice to see that Bill Clinton, the ultimate politician, knows when to set the political stuff aside. I wish more people did.

When looting is morally right

John Hawkins at Right Wing News has taken a pretty hard line on looting, with his position being that it is wrong to even steal food and water, in part because damage is being done to stores in order to get to the food and water. He also points out that it is a slippery slope from thinking it is okay to loot food and water during a disaster to it being okay to steal food and water in normal times because you're family is hungry. I enjoy Right Wing News, but I have to point out the hole in Hawkins' logic here. During normal times, there are places to go to get aid to feed your family. There are shelters, churches, and government aid offices which will help you make sure that your family gets sustenance. There is none of that in New Orleans right now, and if you have money, there is no way of buying food and water. That's a stark difference in situations, and that difference negates his slippery slope argument. You cannot expect people to dehydrate themselves and die just because during normal conditions it would be wrong to steal water. These are people that are truly in survival mode. We are doing a piss poor job of getting supplies into the city and people out of it, and I'm not going to hold anyone to the absurd standard that they shouldn't try and meet their family's most basic bodily needs.

Now, when it comes a lot of the other stuff being brazenly stolen, I have zero tolerance. How is a television or a DVD player going to help you survive? That's right, it isn't. It still is morally wrong to steal in order to enrich one's self during a disaster. It may be wrong to steal to survive, but I think enough people are willing to turn a blind eye to it, because it is damn tough to tell someone making a life or death decision to choose the option that will more likely entail death.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

A day of observations

I've been on the road today, and I observed a number of things that I just wanted to comment on quickly. Feel free to comment.

*Here in Wisconsin, there is a fifty cent swing in gas prices over an area that takes 2 hours to drive. The prices I saw today ranged from $2.99 to $3.49.

*I spoke with a colleague of mine in Florida today. This guy is one of the most tenacious people that I know. He sounded sapped and defeated. He has had near misses with several huricanes in the past couple of years, and he had another near miss when Katrina changed course slightly on her way to Florida. It sounded like he was re-thinking his decision to live in Florida. He is also turning on President Bush. I'm left wondering how many people are just like him.

*As expensive as gas is, traffic seemed to be just as heavy as usual.

*Between conversations I've had and all of the radio I've listened to today, there is growing doubt about whether we should even rebuild New Orleans. Money says it can't not be rebuilt. But that's a later post.

*There is ample irrationality out there right now.

Why?

That's a question that is going to be asked a lot about the aftermath in New Orleans. Part of the answer is the level of the devastation, but there is another component that may not be really identified for a while, and that is the lack of local leadership. I'm not just talking about people like the mayor and the chief of police. I'm talking business people, doctors, etc. The evacuation of New Orleans was actually pretty successful, but it created another problem. Once things started going poorly, there were not enough citizen-leaders left in the city to take control of situations in their local areas, to set up triages for the injured and dead, and to generally hold social order together. The glue was gone, and the city quickly came apart. The evacuation in New Orleans saved many lives, but it created a vacuum of civic leadership that, combined with weak leadership from local government, doomed this city to the near anarchy we saw today.

Your choice: Expensive or none

Okay, I want everyone to think of your favorite product. The product has to be something you buy at least several times a year. Okay, are you envisioning it? Good. Now I'm going to give you a choice-you can continue to buy it, but only at much greater expense than usual, or after tomorrow, you can't buy it at all.

Most of you are going to want to have the freedom to continue to buy that product, even if at greater expense. Now I want you to substitute "gasoline" for your favorite product, because that's what we are looking at right now. Because of hurricane Katrina, the gas supply is tight right now, there is no denying that. I know a lot of people are bitching about the gas stations jacking up prices immediately, but you shouldn't. The reason gas prices are jumping is not because "big oil" is trying to profit off of your back. It is because they know that if they don't raise prices, we are going to consume as much gasoline as we usually do. If we do that, the supply of gasoline is going to outstripped by demand very quickly, and there would be widespread gas shortages. Gas shortages will not be good for you, for the economy, or for "big oil". The quick increases in gas prices are in part an attempt to bring the demand down a little bit to ensure a steady supply of gasoline to the market. Yes, gas stations are making a higher margin on that gasoline that was in their tanks before yesterday, but before long, they'll be back at their regular margins and their volume will be way down because of the higher prices, so don't think that all is rosy for retail petroleum. I'm not trying to tell you that gas companies are raising prices out of benevolence. What I am saying is that they are not going to profit off of this the way many people think, and by protecting themselves with higher prices, they are in a sense protecting us from us, and hopefully ensuring a steady supply of gasoline instead of widespread shortages. It is the market at work, and next Tuesday when you can still put gas in your car, you can thank the market for the price increases of this week.

Top 100 of 1994

Uff-da. I've resisted this meme for a week now, but my it scratches open an old wound-that high schoolish need to fit in. Most of you know the drill. These are the top 100 songs of the year I graduated from high school. Songs that are struck, I'd turn off if they came on the radio. Bolded songs are ones I'd rock to. The rest I'm ambivilant about. And here's the source if you care to try it. Warning: I'm probably going to squander what little good will I have in the blogosphere with this list. 1994 really sucked.

1. The Sign, Ace Of Base
2. I Swear, All-4-One
3. I'll Make Love To You, Boyz II Men
4. The Power Of Love, Celine Dion
5. Hero, Mariah Carey
6. Stay (I Missed You), Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories
7. Breathe Again, Toni Braxton
8. All For Love, Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting
9. All That She Wants, Ace Of Base
10. Don't Turn Around, Ace Of Base
11. Bump N' Grind, R. Kelly
12. Again, Janet Jackson
13. I'll Remember, Madonna
14. Whatta Man, Salt-N-Pepa
15. Wild Night, John Mellencamp and Me'shell Ndegeocello
16. Without You / Never Forget You, Mariah Carey
17. You Mean The World To Me, Toni Braxton
18. Can You Feel The Love Tonight, Elton John
19. The Most Beautiful Girl In The World, Prince Symbol
20. Fantastic Voyage, Coolio
21. Baby I Love Your Way, Big Mountain
22. Regulate, Warren G and Nate Dogg
23. If You Go, Jon Secada
24. Back and Forth, Aaliyah
25. Now And Forever, Richard Marx
26. When Can I See You, Babyface
27. Please Forgive Me, Bryan Adams
28. So Much In Love, All-4-One
29. Shoop, Salt-N-Pepa
30. Any Time, Any Place / And On And On, Janet Jackson
31. Shine, Collective Soul
32. Said I Loved You...But I Lied, Michael Bolton
33. Return To Innocence, Enigma
34. All I Wanna Do, Sheryl Crow
35. Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm, Crash Test Dummies
36. Can We Talk, Tevin Campbell
37. Funkdafied, Da Brat
38. I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), Meat Loaf
39. Gangsta Lean, Drs
40. Because The Night, 10,000 Maniacs
41. Cantaloop, US3
42. Whoomp! (There It Is), Tag Team
43. Come To My Window, Melissa Etheridge
44. Stroke You Up, Changing Faces
45. I'm Ready, Tevin Campbell
46. 100% Pure Love, Crystal Waters
47. Anytime You Need A Friend, Mariah Carey
48. Because Of Love, Janet Jackson
49. Linger, Cranberries
50. Loser, Beck
51. Found Out About You, Gin Blossoms
52. Gin And Juice, Snoop Doggy Dogg
53. Never Lie, Immature
54. Streets Of Philadelphia, Bruce Springsteen
55. Getto Jam, Domino
56. Endless Love, Luther Vandross and Mariah Carey
57. I Miss You w/ Aaron Hall 58, Understanding, Xscape
59. This D.J., Warren G
60. Cry For You, Jodeci
61. Keep Ya Head Up, 2Pac
62. Who Am I (What's My Name?), Snoop Doggy Dogg
63. Another Night, Real McCoy
64. Your Body's Callin', R. Kelly
65. Tootsee Roll, 69 Boyz
66. I Can See Clearly Now, Jimmy Cliff
67. Never Keeping Secrets, Babyface
68. Crazy, Aerosmith
70. At Your Best (You Are Love), Aaliyah
71. Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through, Meat Loaf
72 Amazing, Aerosmith
73. Always, Erasure
74. Groove Thang, Zhane
75. Dreams, Gabrielle
76. Mr. Vain, Culture Beat
77. Mary Jane's Last Dance, Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
78. Anything, SWV
79. Beautiful In My Eyes, Joshua Kadison
80. Stay, Eternal
81. Flava In Ya Ear, Craig Mack
82. U.N.I.T.Y., Queen Latifah
83. Prayer For The Dying, Seal
84. Secret, Madonna
85. Here Comes The Hotstepper, Ini Kamoze
86. Everyday, Phil Collins
87. Don't Take The Girl, Tim McGraw
88. Got Me Waiting, Heavy D and The Boyz
89. December 1963 (Oh, What A Night), Four Seasons
90. Indian Outlaw, Tim McGraw
91. Always, Bon Jovi
92. I'm The Only One, Melissa Etheridge
93. Back In The Day, Ahmad
94. Love Sneakin' Up On You, Bonnie Raitt
95. I'll Take You There, General Public
96. Always In My Heart, Tevin Campbell
97. What Is Love, Haddaway
98. And Our Feelings, Babyface
99. Bop Gun (One Nation), Ice Cube
100. I Wanna Be Down, Brandy