1440 Dear Mr. Kennedy

Here is the site of the National Weather Service's United States Hurricane information by decade. Please begin with the 1940s decade (34 hurricanes). You'll see hurricanes are decreasing in number and intensity. Your exploitation of the Katrina tragedy is too low for words. It is exceeded only by your desire to destroy our economy.

1439 Product Differentiation

When I went back to the supermarket to pick up my photos of the lake, developed with a special deal which included a disc, they were not quite ready. "Just 2 minutes," she said cheerily. So I wandered through the health and beauty aisles, and stopped at Crest toothpaste. Twenty seven varieties. I could hardly believe my eyes, so I counted them. Cinnamon. Baking soda. Mint. Peppermint. Cool mint. Regular (whatever that is). Striped. Tartar fighting. Whitening. Small. Medium. Large. Supersize. Child friendly. Oval shape. Long shape. Then mix and match those. It mystifies me that economists and marketers think this is a big deal, but they do. It seems it is very important to our economy. I just googled the term and got a college course in it.

Today I was at the drug store. I like to look at greeting cards. More product differentiation. Becoming a citizen. Mom and her new husband. Dad and his new wife. Driver's license. Leaving for college. Going to camp. Loss of a child. Loss of an infant. Divorce. Sympathy for a sudden loss. Entering the service. Father to be. Setting up an anti-war camp in Texas (just kidding on that one, but the others are real).

I buy sugar free cookies. What I like about them is that within a brand, there are only a few choices, and there aren't very many brands. Archway has chocolate chip, double chocolate chip, peanut butter and Rocky Road. Voorhis has a shortbread and a raspberry and some sandwich cookies. There's another brand I look for that has really good oreo type in chocolate, vanilla and lemon. They are more expensive, but much easier on the brain.

1438 The liberals see only race

In a city that is probably 70% African American, Jack Shafer wonders: "Nearly every rescued person, temporary resident of the Superdome, looter, or loiterer on the high ground of the freeway I saw on TV was African-American." They are humans; they are people. They are black. They are suffering. Shades of the 19th century, Mr. Shafer. Shame on you.

"Race remains largely untouchable for TV because broadcasters sense that they can't make an error without destroying careers." Gee, Mr. Shafer. Who helped that along? Who screamed for Esterbrook's scalp. Who wanted Rush Limbaugh fired when he honestly pointed out that the media wouldn't criticize a black quarterback? What if CNN and Fox had sent only their African American reporters? Now wouldn't that be racist? Send blacks to report on blacks? Then they could be accused of protecting their white newspeople--or at least Fox would be accused of that.

"To the question of looting, an informed reporter or anchor might have pointed out that anybody—even one of the 500 Nordic blondes working in broadcast news—would loot food from a shuttered shop if they found themselves trapped by a flood. . ." And the shoes, and jewelry, and stealing cop cars and breaking into hospitals and nursing homes? Is it possible in a city nearly 70% black that the bad gangs of looters might also be black? Hmmmm?

1437 Gratitude-impaired

"My thing is they took too long to come to get our people," a woman with a disabled daughter is quoted in today's USAToday. Let's see. First volunteers risked their lives to rescue her by boat, then she was picked up by a bus, and then by helicopter. Must be some of that cradle-to-the grave gratitude.

1436 Disaster Blame

No one in the media seems to be taking the global warming drivel seriously, but it is awash in blame. 85% of a sprawling city living in and on its past is covered up, and "they" should have done something. USAToday comes this close <-----> to blaming President Bush with a long list:

lack of coordination is inexcusable
evacuation was haphazard
halting response from Bush on Tuesday (keep in mind that Tuesday morning the media was announcing that NOLA had been spared)
leadership void
puny efforts
what's the plan
woefully inadequate
was anyone in charge

The Wall Street Journal is also critical of the flaws and failures in the crisis planning, but with specifics that other cities can use:

1) "All the cunning of man cannot defeat the greatest fury of nature."
2) guidelines for coordination between state, federal and local agencies were incomplete.
3) The most vulnerable were not evacuated.
4) There was no search and rescue plan.
5) Conflicting radio frequencies for emergency units defeated workers.
6) Plans were in place for a category 3 hurricane.
7) Florida's plans in 2004 were far superior to Louisiana's, but other states had not learned from it.
8) Heavy equipment needed to repair breaches was not in place.
9) No fuel for emergency generators.
10) Federal gov't must wait for the governor to invite it in for diasaster relief.

However, Joel Kotkin's article in today's WSJ about the city itself is very informative. Not sexy and unprovable like global warming, but local decay seems to be in part the problem. He points out that New Orleans was once the premier city of the south with a vital economy, but Houston and Miami long ago surpassed it. He attributes active immigration from South America and the Caribbean as pluses for those cities bringing in trade, investments, services, and businesses with corresponding higher paying jobs for workers. New Orleans now sells its past--or did until Tuesday morning when the levees were breached. Kotkin said it was a city of underemployment, crime and poverty with a murder rate 10 times the national average, a city of least resistance.

1435 Disaster Relief

Monday night our local TV news carried a story about the Southern Baptist Chain Saw team from Central Ohio. They were loading up their vans and getting ready to go south to help out in one important niche--clearing roads and getting trees off homes. We're looking at agencies for disaster relief. I'd sent my tsunami check to the Mennonites but later learned it basically went through Church World Service which is part of the National Council of Churches. That may be adequate for relief but it won't answer any deeper spiritual needs. So I looked at the site for the Salvation Army and Catholic Charities. Finally, I settled in at the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Homepage, an agency of its North American Mission Board. Not only did they have the information for their most recent Dennis help posted, but right at the top they had "Sharing Christ." All these agencies cooperate--the Baptists are working with the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army at their kitchen sites, for instance. But I'd like to know the volunteers are not going to be shy about spreading the good news while they serve the hot food and clear away trees.

1434 Women for Roberts

This is about all I know. I hope they develop a website or a blog aggregator of bloggers for Roberts. I'd join. The left is really pulling out the heavy guns. Seems he believes in equality.

"Roberts’s other offenses? In 1983, reviewing a report on state-by-state initiatives to combat sex discrimination, he singled out several ideas as ’’highly objectionable’ -- among them, special tuition breaks for women at state colleges to compensate for their lower earnings (a scheme so harebrained and so blatantly discriminatory that it’s amazing it was seriously considered) and preferential treatment for women and minorities during layoffs. Looks like Roberts believed that equality actually means -- well, equality. Oh, the beast...." Cathy Young, Boston Globe

Noticed at Independent Women's Forum

1433 How does this help?

Apparently, a President cannot go to his own home, where he has phone, fax, computers, security and all his staff. Nope. It's a "summer idyll." And this guy Dubya is so incredible, and so astute, he should've known that the levees would break and just didn't respond. WaPo editorializing the news here. Amy's my source.

1432 Looney Left and Paleo-Right, together again

Why is Cindy Sheehan playing footsie with David Duke? Victor Davis Hanson has an excellent article on the extreme left and extreme right falling into bed together, breathing heavy in their hatred of George Bush and the United States.

"This odd symbiosis began right after 9/11. Then the lunatic Left mused about the "pure chaos" of the falling "two huge buck teeth" twin towers, lamented that they were more full of Democrats than Republicans, and saw the strike as righteous payback from third-world victims.

The mirror-imaging fundamentalists and censors in turn saw the attack as an angry God's retribution either for an array of our mortal sins or America's tilting toward Israel."

Besides David Duke, on the right he lists racists and fascists (admittedly, obscure and not as well known as the big time left). On the left he has Harold Meyerson, George Soros, and the grieving, self-serving Mrs. Sheehan.

1431 Hundreds of pounds of journals

Our public library sells used books and magazines donated by the public. Magazines are usually 25 cents, hard cover books $2, and paperback $1. It's clean out time at our house. A huge load of magazines will soon be leaving the garage:

Fine homebuilding
Home
This Old House
Metropolitan home
Architecture
Architectural Record
Environmental Design and Construction
Renovation Style
Elle Decor
Wired
Architectural Digest

But the house doesn't look any different. Magazines are like rabbits. Or spiders. Or spam.

1430 Moonbats and Wingnuts

I wonder if the President could appoint a team of Robert Kennedy Jr. and Pat Robertson to head up the relief effort. Before the dead are even found and buried, Kennedy is blaming Bush (who is personally responsible for global warming, assuming it exists). Robertson years ago in the 90s said hurricanes were God's wrath for sinning Americans. And he claims to have prayed them away from certain areas in the 80s. So the worst natural disaster in our history buries a city known the world over for its partying. Yes, the Bobby and Pat dog and pony show. What a team. And they are both Christians so there's something for everyone to hate.

1429 Casual, low pressure atmosphere

Desperate for a meaningless job complete with all the right words scripted for you? Christ-haunted saw this one first.

1428 Constitution Day is coming

Educational institutions receiving Federal funding are required to hold an educational program pertaining to the United States Constitution on September 17 of each year. The notice.

Alexander Hamilton and the U.S. Constitution

U.S. Constitution

Documents and debates on the Constitution

The framers

1427 The best and worst after the hurricane

The scenes on the cable networks are compelling. The Coast Guard rescues have been dramatic [shared video, but I thought Fox's commentary was the best and the least intrusive]. Most discouraging is the footage of the looters. There's no one to stop them so they are just grinning into the camera lens and waving. Most heartwarming was the shot of someone pouring water on a stranded sea lion who was dying in the heat. Shepard Smith on Fox was probably the best I've ever heard of him--he was not just another pretty face. Stranded in Louisiana when he really wanted to be in Mississippi, his home state, his voice wavered as he motioned toward the devastation. He sounded completely distraught and not at all the controlled professional he usually is.

1426 Do you buy organic and avoid Wal-Mart?

Tomeboy has an interesting collection of contrasts for you Wal-Mart avoiders.

"800,000 organic farm workers are hired each year in California by 35,000 employers. Wal-Mart has 44,000 employees in California.

The average California organic farm worker annually earns $7000-$8000 or $6.75/hour (California minimum wage). His counterpart at Wal-Mart makes $9.70/hour.

Only 19% of organic farm workers have some type of health insurance compared to 90% of employees at Wal-Mart." Read the whole story here.

I was chatting the other day with a woman who works in a small franchise operation where I was shopping--very up-scale, very posh-posh, full of bling-bling. She was breathless with excitement that she might get in at the local Wal-Mart.

1425 There's good news from Iraq

Chrenkoff posts his 34th entry of Good News. I thought of printing it out because of its length, but print preview shows it runs to 38 printed pages. Examples:

"USAID has been helping to bring the constitutional debate to the people (link in PDF): "The Constitutional Dialogue program has organized over 3,000 dialogues throughout Iraq, reaching almost 80,000 Iraqis who also shared their opinions through 64,000 questionnaires. To date, 210 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have participated, including 151 NGOs contracted by USAID and 59 NGOs working as volunteers. Feedback indicates that the dialogues are achieving their dual purpose; to educate and consult the public."

Say what you will about this process, but it is going better than ours did back in the 1700s, with a lot more input from the people.

"Iraq's economic links with other countries keep expanding. "International Finance Corporation (IFC) considered the possibility of investing $210.3 million in the construction project of cement works in Iraq with a productive capacity of 2.9 million tons per annum. Also according to Russian analysis agency AK&M, IFC intends to participate in the capital of new company by investing $8.3 million. The first investment project in Iraq with participation of IFC was realized in finance sector in November 2004 when IFC invested $35 million in the capital of Credit Bank of Iraq."

And to think they don't even have an Alexander Hamilton!

"The first international airline flight to land in the southern Iraqi city of Basra in 15 years arrived here yesterday [22 August] receiving a warm welcome from local officials. A Sharjah-based Phoenix Air Boeing 747 arrived from Dubai with 22 passengers on board."

Tomato farmers are harvesting higher yields thanks to improved technologies learned under the Open Field Tomato Demonstration initiative of USAID's Agriculture Reconstruction and Development for Iraq (ARDI) program. For the demonstrations, ARDI established plots in Baghdad, Diyala and Babylon governorates on which they introduced drip irrigation, black plastic mulch, and fertilization. With the Ministry of Agriculture, USAID representatives monitored the plots and helped participating farmers control tomato pests...

Read the whole thing--and the previous entries too. Check the links bottom right. Also includes "Good News from Afghanistan."

1424 The caption of the photo was

"President Bush has recently been criticized for the amount of time he spends exercising." [WSJ photo and caption, August 30, 2005]

What hasn't he been criticized for? That would be a short list. It wouldn't include his ears; his non-working librarian wife; his non-military daughters; his English; his home state; his vice-president; his judicial nominees; his medicare drug plan; his busting-the-bank education plan; his illegal immigrant plan; his meeting with parents of deceased soldiers only once; his cowboy boots; his grades at Yale; his sense of humor; his smirk; his smile; his frown; his reading list; his church membership; his faith; his tax cuts; his resolve; his values; his believing the intelligence reports of the Clinton administration; his cabinet; his funding of museums and libraries; his pro-life stance; his Yalta remarks; oh yes, and his freeing Afghanistan; his freeing Iraq; and particularly his belief that the USA isn't the only country that deserves a democratic form of government.

But criticism for being just about the most fit 59 year old American male--well, that's pretty silly, even for the left wing Bush bashers.

Norma Blogs Hurricane Katrina

Sunday, September 11, 2005

1505 The Fear Factor

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

1512 Women can stop poverty

Thursday, September 15, 2005

1511 They may never

Monday, September 26, 2005

1537 Why weren't they prepared for this?

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

1542 Does USAToday Hate Black People?

1543 My Biggest Mistake

1546 Red Cross Money Pit

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

1549 What is Bush's Responsibility?

Saturday, October 1, 2005

1569 Good Samaritans and Katrina

1423 Behind Cindy Sheehan

According to Byron York, Lisa Fithian, an anti-war radical, is the organizer and planner behind Cindy Sheehan who was just a grieving mother before Lisa applied her expertise.

She said in an interview with NRO, "I guess my biggest thing is that as people who are trying to create a new world, I do believe we have to dismantle or transform the old order to do that," Fithian continued. "I just fundamentally don't believe it will ever serve our interests as it's currently constructed."

These days, Fithian's tactic for dismantling the old order — at least her tactic for the moment — is Cindy Sheehan. On Wednesday, Sheehan will begin her cross-country tour, winding her way toward Washington. And Lisa Fithian will be with her."

But even Comrade Fithian probably can't keep Cindy from making those gaffs on TV, so it may be her plan that gets dismantled. Today I saw a clip where Cindy said to a crowd, something to the effect, "You can tell your children you met the mother of Casey Sheehan," or something like that. How self-serving and self-aggrandizing is that?

1422 Rachel Carson's Silent Millions

Following a link to Scientist Cards which I saw on a librarian's site, I was disappointed to find that Rachel Carson was one of only two women represented.

Rachel Carson is sometimes described as the mother of the environmental movement. "The idea for her most famous book, Silent Spring, emerged, and she began writing it in 1957. It was published in 1962, and influenced President Kennedy, who had read it, to call for testing of the chemicals mentioned in the book. Carson has been called the mother of the modern environmental movement." Source

JunkScience reports on her faulty reporting of another scientist's work. "Rachel Carson sounded the initial alarm against DDT, but represented the science of DDT erroneously in her 1962 book Silent Spring. Carson wrote "Dr. [James] DeWitt's now classic experiments [on quail and pheasants] have now established the fact that exposure to DDT, even when doing no observable harm to the birds, may seriously affect reproduction. Quail into whose diet DDT was introduced throughout the breeding season survived and even produced normal numbers of fertile eggs. But few of the eggs hatched." DeWitt's 1956 article (in Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry) actually yielded a very different conclusion. Quail were fed 200 parts per million of DDT in all of their food throughout the breeding season. DeWitt reports that 80% of their eggs hatched, compared with the "control" birds which hatched 83.9% of their eggs. Carson also omitted mention of DeWitt's report that "control" pheasants hatched only 57 percent of their eggs, while those that were fed high levels of DDT in all of their food for an entire year hatched more than 80% of their eggs.

In 1972 the EPA banned the use of DDT. No one has ever died from the use of DDT, but millions of Africans die of malaria because of this woman and her legacy. She has brought about the death of more Africans than the infamous Arab and European slave trade and the middle passage. "A pandemic is slaughtering millions, mostly children and pregnant women -- one child every 15 seconds; 3 million people annually; and over 100 million people since 1972 --but there are no protestors clogging the streets or media stories about this tragedy. These deaths can be laid at the doorstep of author Rachel's Carson. Her 1962 bestselling book Silent Spring detailed the alleged "dangers" of the pesticide DDT, which had practically eliminated malaria. Within ten years, the environmentalist movement had convinced the powers that be to outlaw DDT. Denied the use of this cheap, safe and effective pesticide, millions of people -- mostly poor Africans -- have died due to the environmentalist dogma propounded by Carson's book. Her coterie of admirers at the U.N. and environmental groups such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, the World Wildlife Fund and the Environmental Defense Fund have managed to bring malaria and typhus back to sub-Saharan Africa with a vengeance." Lisa Makson

Surely, there is at least one more female scientist out there worthy of the honor of being on this silly website.