Here is a wonderful example of "out of control ego!" Mr. Delay is the Rep Steve Wright, or rep Tom Trafficant of this decade.
Tom DeLay Steps Down From Leadership Post After Indictment
Thursday, September 29, 2005

WASHINGTON — Rep. Tom DeLay (search), R-Texas, said Wednesday he would temporarily step down as House majority leader after he and two political associates were charged by a Texas grand jury with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme.
"In accordance with the rules of the House Republican Conference, I will temporarily step aside as floor leader in order to win exoneration from these baseless charges," DeLay told reporters.
The indictment charges that DeLay, 58, conspired to have corporate contributions funneled through his political action committee to help Republican state candidates. The $155,000 in funds from companies, including Sears Roebuck, was allegedly handed over from the PAC in a $190,000 check to the Republican National Committee (search), which was also given a list of Texas state House candidates and the sums they were to receive. The indictment included a copy of the check.
• Click here to read the indictment against DeLay (FindLaw).
• Click here to read the full text of DeLay's statement.
"The defendants entered into an agreement with each other or with TRMPAC (Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee) to knowingly make a political contribution in violation of the Texas election code," says the four-page indictment. "The contribution was made directly to the Republican National Committee within 60 days of a general election."
Rep. Roy Blunt (search), R-Mo., the majority whip will step in to take over DeLay's responsibilities. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., who is deputy whip, will share extra duties and Rep. David Dreier, R-Calif., chairman of the Rules Committee, will also help out the leadership in conducting daily business, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., announced Wednesday afternoon after a meeting of the Republican caucus.
The indictment stems from a plan DeLay helped set in motion in 2001 to help Republicans win control of the Texas House in the 2002 elections for the first time since Reconstruction.
DeLay told FOX News' Brit Hume in an exclusive interview that he, although he set up TRMPAC, he was not involved in any of the group's dealings or day-to-day operations.
"I had no fiduciary responsibility. I had no managerial responsibility. I and four other elected officials were on an advisory board. I went to five fundraisers," DeLay said. "They did use my name to raise money, but that was the extent. So, I didn't know what they were doing."
DeLay also accused Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is leading the investigation, of pursuing the case for political motives.
"He is a fanatic, a liberal political fanatic," DeLay fumed.
However, the grand jury's foreman, William Gibson, told The Associated Press that Earle didn't pressure members to indict DeLay.
"Ronnie Earle didn't indict him. The grand jury indicted him," Gibson said in an interview at his home.
Gibson, 76, a retired sheriff's deputy, said of DeLay: "He's probably doing a good job. I don't have anything against him. Just something happened."
"I think largely because of his effectiveness as a leader, [DeLay] became a target," Blunt said. "We all believe that he'll return once this indictment is out of the way. That's what the rules call for."
According to GOP rules in the House, DeLay must step down from his position as House majority leader, at least temporarily, if indicted on a criminal charge that carries a sentence of two years or more if convicted. DeLay retains his seat representing Texas' 22nd congressional district, suburbs southwest of Houston.
"I would hope he would just step aside until the matter is resolved," Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., told FOX News, but that "doesn't mean he won't still be involved."
DeLay appeared before reporters after the charges were released. He said he "has done nothing wrong, violated no law, no regulation, no rule of the House." He called the indictment "baseless" and a "sham" and said he will prove his innocence based on the facts and the law.
"This has been going on for two years — multiple grand juries," DeLay told Hume. "And then they come out with an indictment that my own lawyers don't know what I'm charged with."
DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said his client was accused of one charge of criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee. If convicted, the charge carries a sentence of six months to two years and up to $10,000 in fines.
DeLay's successor, Blunt, also has a connection with Ellis, federal records show.
Since May 2003, Blunt's political action committee, the Rely On Your Beliefs Fund, has paid at least $88,000 to Ellis' firm, the J.W. Ellis Co., for political consulting and fundraising. The spending figures were compiled from government records by the nonpartisan Political Money Line, a campaign finance tracking service.
In an afternoon press conference, Earle would not say whether other counts were sought against DeLay. He said money laundering and conspiracy to evade election law charges had been previously brought against Colyandro and Ellis. Earle would not discuss any evidence that he presented to the grand jury saying they are elements that will be brought up in trial.
"The law says that the duty of the prosecuting attorney is not to convict but to see that justice is done," Earle said. "Our job is to prosecute abuses of power ... that's what we do when we find a violation of law."
By any measure, DeLay's indictment was historic. A Senate historian, Donald Ritchie, said after researching the subject, "There's never been a member of Congress in a leadership position who has been indicted."
Two others members of Congress have been indicted since 1996. Former Rep. William Janklow, R-S.D., was convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to 100 days in prison after his car struck and killed a motorcyclist in 2003. Former Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, was sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted on charges from a 2001 indictment accusing him of racketeering and accepting bribes.
Democrats, who have long accused DeLay of ethical impropriety, made much of the indictment, which came just days after federal authorities began a criminal inquiry into Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist over his sale of stock in a family-founded hospital company.
The indictment against the second-ranking, and most assertive Republican leader came on the final day of the grand jury's term. It followed earlier indictments of a state political action committee founded by DeLay and three of his political associates.
DeLay has been in the center of an ethics swirl in Washington. The 11-term congressman was admonished last year by the House Ethics Committee on three separate issues and is the center of a political storm this year over lobbyists paying his and other lawmakers' tabs for expensive travel abroad.
"I happen to have a copy of the indictment in my hand right here and I think the indictment has some problems," said Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, who said Earle pursued the indictment for three years and six grand juries because he knew that under House rules, there would be "instant punishment as the result of an indictment."
The indictment has "escalated politics into the courthouse," Carter told FOX News.
"This is a ham sandwich indictment and we just ask 'where's the beef?'" said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla. "[Earle] just wants to harm Tom DeLay for being an effective Republican leader."
Kevin Madden, DeLay's spokesman, also dismissed the charge as politically motivated.
"This indictment is nothing more than prosecutorial retribution by a partisan Democrat," Madden said, citing Earle.
"We regret the people of Texas will once again have their taxpayer dollars wasted on Ronnie Earle's pursuit of headlines and political paybacks."
Lott said it's no coincidence that Earle has a history of going after those in political office.
"We've got an active district attorney, a prosecutor that really wants to indict somebody," Lott told FOX News. "He can indict a ham sandwhich before most grand juries. When you look at the record of this prosecutor, I can't say I'm particularly surprised."
Democrats have kept up a crescendo of criticism of DeLay's ethics.
"The criminal indictment of Majority Leader Tom DeLay is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people," House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.
Former Rep. Chris Bell, D-Texas, told FOX News that the DeLay indictment is "long overdue" and defended Earle, saying he has prosecuted more Democrats than Republicans during his career. "He's a fine, upstanding district attorney with a fine record," said Bell, who was defeated in a re-election bid last year after the state map was redistricted.
With the help of the donations, DeLay has been accused of having had wide influence in helping the state GOP-led legislature rewrite the map to benefit Texas Republican U.S. House candidates. In 2004, the GOP won six House seats from Texas Democrats.
As a sign of loyalty to DeLay after the grand jury returned indictments against three of his associates, House Republicans last November repealed a rule requiring any of their leaders to step aside if indicted. The rule was reinstituted in January after lawmakers returned to Washington from the holidays fearing the repeal might create a backlash from voters.
DeLay said he will eventually prevail, even if it means being out of the leadership post for a long time.
"I'm innocent. The truth is on my side and the facts are on my side. That's why this is just the worst travesty of justice I have ever seen, he said."
FOX News' Brian Wilson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

BOSTON Archdiocese names insider to replace outspoken pastor
Newton parish protests ouster
By Michael Paulson, Globe Staff September 27, 2005
The Archdiocese of Boston, just days after ousting an outspoken critic of the Catholic hierarchy from the pastorate of one of the most vibrant churches in the region, has appointed the Rev. Christopher J. Coyne, a chancery insider and former spokesman for Cardinal Bernard F. Law and Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley, to take his place.
Parishioners at Our Lady Help of Christians in Newton, already furious over the forced resignation of their longtime pastor, the Rev. Walter H. Cuenin, said they were troubled by the choice because Coyne had been the voice of the church administration during the clergy sexual abuse crisis and the start of the parish closings process.
Cuenin, who had served two consecutive six-year terms as pastor of Our Lady's, announced last weekend that he was resigning after the archdiocese accused him of financial improprieties. The archdiocese said yesterday that Cuenin must now reimburse the church $75,000 to $80,000 for improper financial practices.
But parish leaders, including members of the parish and finance councils, said the archdiocese was selectively enforcing little-known policies. They said those lay-led boards had repeatedly approved the payments, including a $500 monthly payment from the parish for the performance of baptisms, weddings, and funerals, and the parish-financed lease of a Honda Accord that was shared with visiting priests. They also said they believed the arrangements to be fully in compliance with archdiocesan regulations and similar to arrangements at other parishes.
Last night, about 300 parishioners angered over Cuenin's ouster gathered on the front lawn of Our Lady's in the pouring rain, with candles flickering beneath umbrellas and then filed into the church basement where they planned to hold a vigil overnight. When parishioner Margaret Roylance called for ''the immediate reinstatement of Father Walter Cuenin," other members of the parish responded with raucous applause, tears, and foot stomping.
Parish leaders said they believe that Cuenin was targeted for ouster because he was a prominent leader of local priests who helped organize a letter calling for Law to resign, who reached out to gays and lesbians, and who frequently suggested that the church should at least discuss the possibility of ordaining married men and giving greater roles to women. The archdiocese denied that Cuenin was targeted for any reason other than financial improprieties.
Last night in Dedham, Cuenin, after giving a previously scheduled speech on the role of the laity, declined to criticize the archdiocese. But he said that church officials had raised no objections about his compensation during several previous audits of the parish.
''I feel sad to leave Newton," Cuenin said. ''I understand the people's sorrow and loss, but I hope they welcome their new pastor."
During his tenure, Cuenin had been summoned to the chancery on several occasions to explain remarks he made in homilies or, once, in a statement to the Legislature opposing a bill that he believed would bar certain benefits for same-sex couples by defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. And for 10 months, from December 2002 to September 2003, the archdiocese banned archdiocesan gatherings at Our Lady's after Cuenin was quoted in The New Yorker magazine questioning church teachings on gays and women.
Cuenin briefly attempted to lower his public profile, but earlier this month, in his parish bulletin, he suggested he was sympathetic to gay couples who were married, writing, ''It doesn't appear that anyone's marriage has been threatened or compromised by the 1,800 gay marriages that have already taken place in the past year."
Cuenin was a frequent target of the most conservative elements of the church locally, who wrote on blogs and in e-mails of their views that he was a heretic who should be ousted from the priesthood. One of the blogs used the headline ''this is fun" on a link to a newspaper story about Cuenin's resignation.
''This is a witch-hunt, not more, not less," said Gisela Morales-Barreto of Newton, a parishioner at Our Lady's for 20 years. ''They were trying to find something against him, and it took them all this time to make it happen. This is their way to punish him and punish us for how outspoken he has been. And now the one thing we have feared all along is happening -- that if Walter will leave us, they will send someone from the other extreme to put the brakes on what this community is all about. Chris Coyne is in the opposite end of what Walter is all about."
Coyne, in a brief telephone interview yesterday, said he understood the concerns of parishioners. ''I think the most important thing, given the present situation, is just to try and listen to people and also to be available to people," he said. ''Over time, I hope to work with them, to continue to build the good faith life and community that is already present at Our Lady's."
Coyne, 47, currently teaches liturgical theology at St. John's Seminary in Brighton and assists at parishes in Medfield and Holliston. He said that he spent time at Our Lady's over the course of three years in seminary, when he conducted a parish census, and that the Our Lady's parish choir sang at his first Mass, in his hometown of Woburn, in 1986.
''I have a great affection for Our Lady's and already know it somewhat, and I hope to be able to return to the people of Our Lady's some of the support and kindness and Christian love that they showed me when I was a student," Coyne said. His appointment is effective today.
O'Malley's current spokesman, Terrence C. Donilon, defended Coyne's selection, saying: ''Father Coyne is an immensely talented, devoted, and caring priest. The archbishop holds Father Coyne in the highest regard and knows he will do a superb job as pastor."
Our Lady's is one of the largest parishes in the archdiocese, with average weekend Mass attendance of 1,895 people and 201 baptisms, 118 funerals, and 92 weddings a year.
Late yesterday, the archdiocese issued a three-paragraph statement saying Cuenin's resignation was requested because of financial practices that ''do not comport with archdiocesan policy, canon law, or archdiocesan statutes."
The archdiocese said those practices included ''Mass stipends taken at a rate in excess of that permitted by canon law and archdiocesan statutes; automobile expenses funded by the parish in excess of archdiocesan policies for expense reimbursement, which are updated regularly and circulated to all clergy; and compensation taken from both the parish and the archdiocese for the same time period time during a sabbatical."
The archdiocese did not disclose the current level of permissible reimbursement for Mass or for vehicle costs.
The lay leadership of the Newton parish -- members of the parish and finance councils-- used unusually strong language to defend the former pastor. The parish council, in a statement issued before the archdiocese spoke, said ''the allegations of financial impropriety are ridiculous on their face."
''Father Cuenin has been one of the leading voices of protest and inquiry throughout the scandal of clerical sexual abuse," the statement said. ''We do not consider it a coincidence that the archdiocese has now created a way to force Father Cuenin out of his pastorship, and we find it deceitful, cowardly, and immoral to pretend that parish finances have anything to do with his departure."
In a separate statement, the parish finance council said the stipend in question predated Cuenin's arrival at the parish, and was a practice ''that the finance council knew about and fully supported." The council said the leased automobile was the idea of the finance council, which thought both practices complied with archdiocesan policy.
The chairman of the board of the Boston Priests Forum, the Rev. Thomas A. Mahoney, said he cannot understand what the archdiocese is doing.
''I see this as a very focused application of a diocesan policy that for the 12 years of Father Cuenin's stewardship was approved by previous audits, and the violations themselves are of a nature that no reasonable person could consider as greedy, secret, or malfeasance of any kind," Mahoney said. ''There were many opportunities along the way to ask him to correct those policies, and that was never done, so I don't understand why that would be applied so harshly at this moment."
Raja Mishra of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Michael Paulson can be reached at mpaulson@globe.com.
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company.

Dodging the bullet!

The failure of Benjamin Netanyahu to defeat Ariel Sharon in the Lukid Party Conference at Tel Aviv Monday is a bit of good fortune for Israel. Extremists are on the march left and right as the nation must finally find rational accommodation with the Palestinians. Netanyahu represents the last gasp of those embittered Zionists who want to be as ruthless and selfserving as Israel's historical enemies: Anti Semitic, Euro fascists and Arab extremists.

The future is not assured though. Sharon must find a centrist path that enables moderate Palestinians and lends credibility to moderate Arabs all over the Middle East.

Evidence shows a new generation seeking a better material life and showing increasing resentment to religious appeals.

To be blunt Netanyahu offers no solutions and further fractoring of an already troubled political community.

2

I urge visitors to seek out "The Belmont Club" a marvelous blog. Superb insight and challenging essays, politics born from intelligent consideration.

GET READY!

000WTNT33 KNHC 222049TCPAT3BULLETINHURRICANE RITA ADVISORY NUMBER 21NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL4 PM CDT THU SEP 22 2005...DANGEROUS HURRICANE RITA GRADUALLY HEADING TOWARD THE SOUTHWESTLOUISIANA AND UPPER TEXAS COASTS... A HURRICANE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FROM PORT O'CONNOR TEXAS TO MORGANCITY LOUISIANA. A HURRICANE WARNING MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONSARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS.PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED TOCOMPLETION. AT 4 PM CDT...2100Z...A TROPICAL STORM WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FORNORTH OF THE MOUTH OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER TO THE MOUTH OF THEPEARL RIVER INCLUDING METROPOLITAN NEW ORLEANS AND LAKEPONTCHARTRAIN. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS NOW IN EFFECT FOR THESOUTHEASTERN COAST OF LOUISIANA EAST OF MORGAN CITY TO THE MOUTH OFTHE MOUTH OF THE PEARL RIVER INCLUDING METROPOLITAN NEW ORLEANS ANDLAKE PONTCHARTRAIN....AND FROM SOUTH OF PORT O'CONNOR TO PORTMANSFIELD TEXAS. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICALSTORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THENEXT 24 HOURS. A TROPICAL STROM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM SOUTH OF PORTMANSFIELD TO BROWNSVILLE TEXAS...AND FOR THE NORTHEASTERN COAST OFMEXICO FROM RIO SAN FERNANDO NORTHWARD TO THE RIO GRANDE.A TROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS AREPOSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS. FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...INCLUDING POSSIBLEINLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUEDBY YOUR LOCAL WEATHER OFFICE. AT 4 PM CDT...2100Z...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE RITA WAS LOCATED NEARLATITUDE 25.8 NORTH...LONGITUDE 89.5 WEST OR ABOUT 405 MILES...650 KM...SOUTHEAST OF GALVESTON TEXAS AND ABOUT 390 MILES... 630KM...SOUTHEAST OF PORT ARTHUR TEXAS. RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 9 MPH...15 KM/HR. AGRADUAL TURN TOWARD THE NORTHWEST IS EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 24HOURS. ON THIS TRACK...THE CORE OF RITA WILL BE APPROACHING THESOUTHWEST LOUISIANA AND THE UPPER TEXAS COAST LATE FRIDAY. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 145 MPH...230 KM/HR...WITH HIGHERGUSTS. RITA IS A EXTREMELY DANGEROUS CATEGORY FOUR HURRICANE ON THESAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN INTENSITY ARE LIKELY DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 60 MILES... 95 KM...FROM THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UPTO 205 MILES...335 KM. ANYTROPICAL STROM FORCE WINDS IN THE NEWORLEANS AREA ARE EXPECTED TO BE CONFINED TO A FEW SQUALLSASSOCIATED WITH QUICKLY MOVING RAINBANDS. AT 3 PM CDT...A NOAA BUOYREPORTED A 10-MINUTE AVERAGE WIND OF 89 MPH...143 KM/HR WITH A GUSTTO 112 MPH...180 KM/HR. LATEST MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE REPORTED BY AN AIR FORCE PLANE WAS 913 MB...26.96 INCHES. COASTAL STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 15 TO 20 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDELEVELS...ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS BATTERING WAVES...CAN BEEXPECTED NEAR AND TO THE EAST OF WHERE THE CENTER MAKES LANDFALL.TIDES ARE CURRENTLY RUNNING ABOUT 2 FEET ABOVE NORMAL ALONG THELOUISIANA...MISSISSIPPI AND ALABAMA COASTS IN THE AREAS AFFECTED BYKATRINA. TIDES IN THOSE AREAS WILL INCREASE TO 3 TO 5 FEET AND BEACCOMPANIED BY LARGE WAVES...AND RESIDENTS THERE COULD EXPERIENCECOASTAL FLOODING. RAINFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 8 TO 12 INCHES WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM 15INCH TOTALS ARE POSSIBLE ALONG THE PATH OF RITA OVER SOUTHEAST TEXASAND SOUTHWESTERN LOUISIANA AS IT MOVES INLAND. BASED ON THEFORECAST TRACK...TOTALS ACCUMULATIONS IN EXCESS OF 25 INCHES AREPOSSIBLE OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS AS THE SYSTEM SLOWS DOWN. INADDITION...RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES ARE POSSIBLE OVERSOUTHEASTERN LOUISIANA INCLUDING NEW ORLEANS. REPEATING THE 4 PM CDT POSITION...25.8 N... 89.5 W. MOVEMENTTOWARD...WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 9 MPH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...145MPH. MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE... 913 MB. AN INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANECENTER AT 7 PM CDT FOLLOWED BY THE NEXT COMPLETE ADVISORY AT 10 PMCDT. FORECASTER AVILA

GOD REALLY HATES G.W.BUSH!

000WTNT33 KNHC 220008TCPAT3BULLETINHURRICANE RITA INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY NUMBER 17A...CORRECTEDNWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL7 PM CDT WED SEP 21 2005CORRECTED PRESSURE CONVERSION TO 26.52 INCHES ...CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE RITA CONTINUING TO DEEPEN......NOW THE THIRD MOST INTENSE HURRICANE IN THE ATLANTIC BASIN ON RECORD... A HURRICANE WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR GULF OF MEXICO COAST FROM PORTMANSFIELD TEXAS TO CAMERON LOUISIANA. A TROPICAL STORM WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR EAST OF CAMERON TO GRANDISLE LOUISIANA AND FROM SOUTH OF PORT MANSFIELD TO BROWNSVILLE. THE GOVERNMENT OF MEXICO HAS ISSUED A TROPICAL STORM WATCH FOR THENORTHEAST COAST OF MEXICO FROM RIO SAN FERNANDO NORTHWARD. A HURRICANE WATCH MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLEWITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS. A TROPICAL STORMWATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THEWATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS. INTERESTS IN THE NORTHWESTERN GULF OF MEXICO SHOULD MONITOR THEPROGRESS OF DANGEROUS HURRICANE RITA. FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...INCLUDING POSSIBLEINLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUEDBY YOUR LOCAL WEATHER OFFICE. AT 7 PM CDT...0000Z...THE EYE OF HURRICANE RITA WAS LOCATED NEARLATITUDE 24.5 NORTH...LONGITUDE 86.8 WEST OR ABOUT 580 MILESEAST-SOUTHEAST OF GALVESTON TEXAS AND ABOUT 680 MILES EAST-SOUTHEASTOF CORPUS CHRISTI TEXAS. RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST NEAR 13 MPH AND THIS MOTION ISEXPECTED TO CONTINUE DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 165 MPH...WITH HIGHER GUSTS. RITAIS A POTENTIALLY CATASTROPHIC CATEGORY FIVE HURRICANE ON THESAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN INTENSITY ARE LIKELYDURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 70 MILES FROM THECENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 175MILES. THE PRESSURE HAS BEEN FALLING RAPIDLY DURING THE DAY AND THE LATESTMINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE RECENTLY REPORTED BY AN AIR FORCE RESERVEUNIT RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT WAS 898 MB...26.52 INCHES. THIS MAKESRITA THE THIRD MOST INTENSE HURRICANE IN TERMS OF PRESSURE IN THEATLANTIC BASIN. TIDES ARE CURRENTLY RUNNING NEAR NORMAL ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI ANDLOUISIANA COASTS IN THE AREAS AFFECTED BY KATRINA. TIDES IN THOSEAREAS WILL INCREASE UP TO 3 TO 4 FEET OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS WITHLARGE WAVES ON TOP AND RESIDENTS THERE COULD EXPERIENCE FLOODING. REPEATING THE 7 PM CDT POSITION...24.5 N... 86.8 W. MOVEMENTTOWARD...WEST NEAR 13 MPH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...165 MPH.MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...898 MB. THE NEXT ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER AT 10 PM CDT. FORECASTER STEWART

The Bloom is Off:
A brief editorial from the Monday 9/19 SF Chronicle

GOV. ARNOLD Schwarzenegger returned to campaign mode over the weekend. He announced his intent to run for re-election in 2006, endorsed a labor-despised proposition to restrict the use of union dues for political purposes and generally stepped up his rhetoric against his "special interest" adversaries in Sacramento.
Make no mistake: Today's Schwarzenegger is very different than the swaggering "citizen-politician" who ousted Gov. Gray Davis in the 2003 recall election. In first running for office, Republican Schwarzenegger seemed intent on transcending party labels and traditional ideological boundaries. The strategy worked because many Californians, even Democrats and independents, seemed eager to project their own discontent with the system onto the rousing words of an actor who pledged to "blow up boxes" and shake up the status quo in the state Capitol.
Schwarzenegger began his campaign for the special election in earnest this weekend with his popularity on the wane and his "special interest" foes -- unions representing teachers, nurses, firefighters and other public employees -- eager for combat with a governor who once had seasoned legislators under the spell of his charm.
Two years ago, Schwarzenegger seemed on the brink of reinventing modern California politics. Today, as he rakes in huge political contributions from corporate interests and takes wedge issues off the shelf with a tough election approaching, he no longer seems so original or invincible. Democratic legislators no longer fear master-salesman Schwarzenegger's oft-repeated threat to go "over their heads" to the electorate.
Schwarzenegger now has seven weeks to restore his lost aura.

Rita is coming

000WTNT33 KNHC 191800TCPAT3BULLETINTROPICAL STORM RITA INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY NUMBER 7ANWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL2 PM EDT MON SEP 19 2005 ...RITA NEARING HURRICANE STRENGTH OVER THE CENTRAL BAHAMAS... AT 2 PM EDT...1800Z...THE GOVERNMENT OF THE BAHAMAS HAS DISCONTINUEDALL WARNINGS FOR THE TURKS AND CAICOS.A HURRICANE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE EXUMAS AND FOR ANDROSISLAND IN THE NORTHWEST BAHAMAS. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING IS INEFFECT FOR ALL OF THE REMAINDER OF THE BAHAMAS.A HURRICANE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE EXTREME SOUTHERN FLORIDAPENINSULA FROM GOLDEN BEACH SOUTHWARD TO FLORIDA CITY AND WESTWARDTO EAST CAPE SABLE...AND FOR ALL OF THE FLORIDA KEYS FROM OCEANREEF TO THE DRY TORTUGAS...INCLUDING FLORIDA BAY. A HURRICANE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FOR THE CUBAN PROVINCES OF VILLACLARA AND MATANZAS. A HURRICANE WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR THEPROVINCES OF CIUDAD DE HABANA...LA HABANA...AND PINAR DEL RIO. ATROPICAL STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE PROVINCES OF CIEGODE AVILA...SANCTI SPIRITUS...AND CIENFUEGOS. A TROPICAL STORM WARNING AND A HURRICANE WATCH ARE IN EFFECT FROMDEERFIELD BEACH FLORIDA SOUTHWARD TO NORTH OF GOLDEN BEACH...AND ATROPICAL STORM WARNING IS IN EFFECT FROM NORTH OF DEERFIELD BEACHNORTHWARD TO JUPITER INLET. A HURRICANE WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR THE EXTREME SOUTHWESTERN FLORIDAPENINSULA FROM WEST OF EAST CAPE SABLE NORTHWARD TOCHOKOLOSKEE...AND A TROPICAL STORM WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR THESOUTHWESTERN FLORIDA COAST FROM NORTH OF CHOKOLOSKEE TO ENGLEWOOD.A HURRICANE WARNING MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION. AHURRICANE WATCH MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHINTHE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS.A TROPICAL STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. ATROPICAL STORM WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS AREPOSSIBLE WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS.FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...INCLUDING POSSIBLEINLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUEDBY YOUR LOCAL WEATHER OFFICE. AT 2 PM EDT...1800Z...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM RITA WAS LOCATEDNEAR LATITUDE 23.1 NORTH... LONGITUDE 75.9 WEST OR ABOUT 30 MILESSOUTH-SOUTHWEST OF GEORGETOWN ON GREAT EXUMA IN THE CENTRALBAHAMAS. THIS POSITION IS ABOUT 165 MILES... 265 KM... SOUTHEASTOF NASSAU AND ABOUT 380 MILES EAST-SOUTHEAST OF KEY WEST FLORIDA. RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 14 MPH... 23 KM/HR...AND THIS MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. ON THIS TRACK...THE CENTER OF RITA WILL PASS OVER OR NEAR ANDROSISLAND IN THE BAHAMAS TONIGHT...AND APPROACH THE FLORIDA KEYSTUESDAY MORNING. DATA FROM THE STEPPED FREQUENCY MICROWAVE RADIOMETER ONBOARD A NOAAHURRICANE HUNTER AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARENEAR 70 MPH...115 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER GUSTS. SOME STRENGTHENING ISFORECAST DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS... AND RITA COULD BECOME AHURRICANE LATER TODAY OR TONIGHT. TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 145 MILES...230 KM FROM THE CENTER. THE ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 993 MB...29.32 INCHES. RITA IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAINFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 4 TO 6INCHES OVER THE SOUTHEASTERN AND CENTRAL BAHAMAS...WITH POSSIBLEISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 8 INCHES. RAINFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 3TO 6 INCHES POSSIBLE FOR EASTERN AND CENTRAL CUBA. STORM TOTALS OF6 TO 10 INCHES...WITH ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 15 INCHES...WILLBE POSSIBLE IN THE FLORIDA KEYS AND NORTHWESTERN CUBA...WITH 3 TO 5INCHES POSSIBLE ACROSS THE SOUTHERN FLORIDA PENINSULA. STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 6 TO 9 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE LEVELS...ALONGWITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS BATTERING WAVES...ARE POSSIBLE IN THEFLORIDA KEYS IN AREAS OF ONSHORE FLOW. COASTAL STORM SURGEFLOODING OF 3 TO 5 FEET IS POSSIBLE ALONG THE EXTREME SOUTHEASTERNFLORIDA COAST...AND IN THE NORTHWESTERN BAHAMAS. REPEATING THE 2 PM EDT POSITION...23.1 N... 75.9 W. MOVEMENTTOWARD...WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 14 MPH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINEDWINDS... 70 MPH. MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE... 993 MB. THE NEXT ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER AT5 PM EDT.

GOD HATES George W. Bush!

Tropical Storm RITA Public Advisory
Home Public Adv Fcst/Adv Discussion Strike Probs Wind Probs Maps/Charts Archive US Watch/Warning
000
WTNT33 KNHC 182343
TCPAT3
BULLETIN
TROPICAL STORM RITA INTERMEDIATE ADVISORY NUMBER 4A
NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL
8 PM EDT SUN SEP 18 2005

...RITA GETTING MUCH BETTER ORGANIZED AND STRENGTHENING AS IT NEARS
THE SOUTHEASTERN BAHAMAS...

A HURRICANE WATCH IS IN EFFECT FOR ALL OF THE FLORIDA KEYS FROM
OCEAN REEF SOUTHWARD AND WESTWARD TO DRY TORTUGAS...INCLUDING
FLORIDA BAY. THE WATCH AREA WILL LIKELY BE UPGRADED TO A HURRICANE
WARNING LATER TONIGHT.
A HURRICANE WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE NORTHWEST BAHAMAS.
PORTIONS OF THIS WATCH AREA MAY BE UPGRADED TO A HURRICANE WARNING
LATER TONIGHT.
A HURRICANE WATCH ALSO REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE PROVINCES OF VILLA
CLARA...MATANZAS...CIUDAD DE HABANA...LA HABANA...AND PINAR DEL
RIO...AND A TROPICAL STORM WATCH FOR THE PROVINCES OF CIEGO DE
AVILA...SANCTI SPIRITUS...AND CIENFUEGOS.
A TROPICAL STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE TURKS AND CAICOS
ISLANDS...AND FOR THE SOUTHEAST AND CENTRAL BAHAMAS.
A TROPICAL STORM WATCH REMAINS IN EFFECT FOR THE EXTREME
SOUTHEASTERN FLORIDA PENINSULA FROM DEERFIELD BEACH SOUTHWARD TO
FLORIDA CITY AND CONTINUING WESTWARD TO EAST CAPE SABLE. THE WATCH
AREA WILL LIKELY BE UPGRADED TO A TROPICAL STORM WARNING AND
POSSIBLY A HURRICANE WATCH LATER TONIGHT.

A HURRICANE WATCH MEANS THAT HURRICANE CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE
WITHIN THE WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS. A TROPICAL
STORM WARNING MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED
WITHIN THE WARNING AREA WITHIN THE NEXT 24 HOURS. A TROPICAL STORM
WATCH MEANS THAT TROPICAL STORM CONDITIONS ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE
WATCH AREA...GENERALLY WITHIN 36 HOURS.

FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA...INCLUDING POSSIBLE
INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS...PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED
BY YOUR LOCAL WEATHER OFFICE.

AT 8 PM EDT...0000Z...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM RITA WAS
REFORMING FARTHER NORTH NEAR LATITUDE 22.7 NORTH... LONGITUDE 72.9
WEST OR ABOUT 330 MILES ...530 KM... EAST-SOUTHEAST OF NASSAU.

RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 9 MPH...15 KM/HR. A
GRADUAL TURN TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST OR WEST IS EXPECTED TO OCCUR
LATER TONIGHT OR ON MONDAY. ON THIS TRACK...RITA WILL BE MOVING
OVER THE SOUTHEAST AND CENTRAL BAHAMAS TONIGHT AND MONDAY.

REPORTS FROM AN AIR FORCE RESERVE RECONNAISSANCE INDICATE MAXIMUM
SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE INCREASED TO NEAR 50 MPH... 85 KM/HR...WITH
HIGHER GUSTS. ADDITIONAL STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST DURING THE NEXT
24 HOURS... AND RITA COULD BECOME A CATEGORY ONE HURRICANE BY LATE
MONDAY.

TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 70 MILES... 110
KM... MAINLY TO THE NORTH OF THE CENTER.

THE MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE RECENTLY MEASURED BY AN AIR FORCE
HURRICANE HUNTER PLANE WAS 1005 MB...29.68 INCHES.
RITA IS EXPECTED TO PRODUCE TOTAL RAINFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 3 TO 5
INCHES OVER MUCH OF THE TURKS AND CAICOS AND THE SOUTHERN AND
CENTRAL BAHAMAS...WITH POSSIBLE ISOLATED MAXIMUM AMOUNTS OF 8
INCHES.

REPEATING THE 8 PM EDT POSITION...22.7 N... 72.9 W. MOVEMENT
TOWARD...NORTHWEST NEAR 9 MPH. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED
WINDS... 50 MPH. MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...1005 MB.

THE NEXT ADVISORY WILL BE ISSUED BY THE NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER
AT 11 PM EDT.

FORECASTER STEWART

Big-government liberal? Look who's talking
By Steve RundioAn

Argument rages on this editorial page over whether Democratic Congressman Kind is a big-government liberal, but there's also a political species called the big-government conservative. Its symbol, sitting in an undisclosed location somewhere in La Crosse, is the $180,000 Lenco BearCat assault vehicle. It's the newest addition to the La Crosse's County Sheriff's Department.What is the $180,000 Lenco BearCat assault vehicle? According to Autoweek, "it's the most popular new urban rescue/assault vehicle among first responders and military units from the LADP to the U.S. Air Force. It has bulletproof windows, blast fragmentation resistant floors, gunports and roof hatches with rotating turrets."Who paid for the $180,000 Lenco BearCat assault vehicle? The Department of Homeland Security, the most unconservative creation of my lifetime.DHS was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. A traditional conservative would have sought to make existing institutions work better rather than create a new cabinet post with a new layer of bureaucracy.Not President Bush. Even as Bush's supporters had the gall to ridicule anyone who described terrorism as a law enforcement issue, the President created a new $32 billion per year law enforcement enforcement agency. One of its tasks is to distribute money and equipment to local law enforcement agencies to fight the war on terror.Sending La Crosse County the $180,000 Lenco BearCat assault vehicle raises serious questions about the stewardship of that money. Does La Crosse County really need this? The $180,000 Lenco BearCat assault vehicle does some neat things, but it's inconceivable La Crosse County would have paid for this beast on its own dime. Incidentally, this isn't a total freebie for La Crosse taxpayers; it costs a lot more to maintain a $180,000 Lenco BearCat assault vehicle than a Crown Victoria.
La Crosse isn't the only city chomping on DHS pork. North Pole, Alaska (population: 1,600), received a $500,000 for communication equipment. Boulder County, Colo., got $24,000 for two high-speed rubber motorboats. This stuff isn't hard to find. Just type "homeland security pork" into any search engine and find all the examples you want.Big-government conservatism isn't just limited to DHS. The July issue of Harper's Magazine reported how Congress has streamlined the process by which members of Congress insert spending items into appropriation bills. The article obliterated the fiction that Republicans are only as corrupt as Democrats who ran Congress until 1995. In 1980, for example, Congress inserted just 62 defense department "earmarks" Last year, it was 2,671. The number of earmarks tripled from $10.6 billion in 1998 to $32.7 in 2004. Harper's calls it "The Great American Pork Barrel -- Washington streamlines the means of corruption," and it's not happening with on the Democrats' watch.Still don't believe big-government conservatism exists? Compare spending patterns of the Clinton and Bush years. Under Clinton, federal spending went up 13.3 percent over eight years. Bush needed just four years to jack up spending by 19.7 percent. The difference isn't defense spending. Clinton raised non-defense discretionary spending by 15.1 percent in eight years. Under four years of Bush, it's up 25.3 percent.There are two types of big government. There's big-government liberalism, in which the government administers broad-based entitlements (Social Security, Medicaid) and provides services collectively that individuals can't purchase on their own (police protection, roads, public parks, etc.). Has this vision suffered from excess and waste? Of course. But it has raised the standard of living for most Americans. The elderly can't buy affordable health insurance on the private market, and most individuals can't purchase their own personal police or fire protection. At the very least, big-government liberalism's heart is in the right place.There's nothing good about big-government conservatism. It's an iron triangle of politicians, lobbyists and industry wallowing in the spoils of government contracting and favoritism linked to campaign contributions. The recipient of big-government liberalism is likely to be a 90-year-old who can't get out of bed, or a pregnant teen in need of pre-natal care. The recipient of big-government conservatism is a Halliburton executive or someone who lobbies on Halliburton's behalf. The owners of Lenco Industries certainly did well when the $180,000 Lenco BearCat assault vehicle landed in La Crosse.Big-government liberals vs. big-government conservatives? Score this one for Ron Kind.Steve Rundio is the editorial page editor for Tomah Newspapers.

Brain May Still Be Evolving, Studies Hint

By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: September 9, 2005
Two genes involved in determining the size of the human brain have undergone substantial evolution in the last 60,000 years, researchers say, leading to the surprising suggestion that the brain is still undergoing rapid evolution.
The discovery adds weight to the view that human evolution is still a work in progress, since previous instances of recent genetic change have come to light in genes that defend against disease and confer the ability to digest milk in adulthood.
It had been widely assumed until recently that human evolution more or less stopped 50,000 years ago.
The new finding, reported in today's issue of Science by Bruce T. Lahn of the University of Chicago, and colleagues, could raise controversy because of the genes' role in determining brain size. New versions of the genes, or alleles as geneticists call them, appear to have spread because they enhanced brain function in some way, the report suggests, and they are more common in some populations than others.
But several experts strongly criticized this aspect of the finding, saying it was far from clear that the new alleles conferred any cognitive advantage or had spread for that reason. Many genes have more than one role in the body, and the new alleles could have been favored for some other reason, these experts said, such as if they increased resistance to disease.
Even if the new alleles should be shown to improve brain function, that would not necessarily mean that the populations where they are common have any brain-related advantage over those where they are rare. Different populations often take advantage of different alleles, which occur at random, to respond to the same evolutionary pressure, as has happened in the emergence of genetic defenses against malaria, which are somewhat different in Mediterranean and African populations.
If the same is true of brain evolution, each population might have a different set of alleles for enhancing function, many of which remain to be discovered.
The Chicago researchers began their study with two genes, known as microcephalin and ASPM, that came to light because they are disabled in a disease called microcephaly. People with the condition are born with a brain much smaller than usual, often with a substantial shrinkage of the cerebral cortex, that seems to be a throwback to when the human brain was a fraction of its present size.
Last year, Dr. Lahn, one of a select group of researchers supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, showed that a group of 20 brain-associated genes, including microcephalin and ASPM, had evolved faster in the great ape lineage than in mice and rats. He concluded that these genes might have had important roles in human evolution. As part of this study, he noticed that microcephalin and ASPM had an unusual pattern of alleles. With each gene, one allele was much more common than all the others. He and his colleagues have now studied the worldwide distribution of the alleles by decoding the DNA of the two genes in many different populations.
They report that with microcephalin, a new allele arose about 37,000 years ago, although it could have appeared as early as 60,000 or as late as 14,000 years ago. About 70 percent of people in most European and East Asian populations carry this allele of the gene, but it is much rarer in most sub-Saharan Africans.
With the other gene, ASPM, a new allele emerged 14,100 to 500 years ago, the researchers favoring a midway date of 5,800 years. The allele has attained a frequency of about 50 percent in populations of the Middle East and Europe, is less common in East Asia, and is found at low frequency in some sub-Saharan Africa peoples.
The Chicago team suggests that the new microcephalin allele may have arisen in Eurasia or as the first modern humans emigrated from Africa some 50,000 years ago. They note that the ASPM allele emerged about the same time as the spread of agriculture in the Middle East 10,000 years ago and the emergence of the civilizations of the Middle East some 5,000 years ago, but say that any connection is not yet clear.
Dr. Lahn said there might be a fair number of genes that affect the size of the brain, each making a small difference yet one that can be acted on by natural selection. "It's likely that different populations would have a different makeup of these genes, so it may all come out in the wash," he said. In other words, East Asians and Africans probably have other brain-enhancing alleles, not yet discovered, that have spread to high frequency in their populations.
He said he expected that more such allele differences between populations would come to light, as have differences in patterns of genetic disease. "I do think this kind of study is a harbinger for what might become a rather controversial issue in human population research," Dr. Lahn said. But he said his data and other such findings "do not necessarily lead to prejudice for or against any particular population."
A greater degree of concern was expressed by Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. Dr. Collins said that even if the alleles were indeed under selection, it was still far from clear why they had risen to high frequency, and that "one should resist strongly the conclusion that it has to do with brain size, because the selection could be operating on any other not yet defined feature." He said he was worried about the way these papers will be interpreted.
Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Maryland and a co-author of both studies, said the statistical signature of selection on the two genes was "one of the strongest that I've seen." But she, like Dr. Collins, said that "we don't know what these alleles are doing" and that specific tests were required to show that they in fact influenced brain development or were selected for that reason.
Dr. Lahn acknowledges this point, writing in his article that "it remains formally possible that an unrecognized function of microcephalin outside of the brain is actually the substrate of selection."
Another geneticist, David Goldstein of Duke University, said that the new study was "very well done," but that "it is a real stretch to argue for example that microcephalin is under selection and that that selection must be related to brain size or cognitive function." The gene could have risen to prominence through a random process known as genetic drift, Dr. Goldstein said.
Richard Klein, an archaeologist who has proposed that modern human behavior first appeared in Africa because of some genetic change that promoted innovativeness, said the time of emergence of the microcephalin allele "sounds like it could support my idea." If the allele did support enhanced cognitive function, "it's hard to understand why it didn't get fixed at 100 percent nearly everywhere," he said.
Dr. Klein suggested the allele might have spread for a different reason, that as people colonizing East Asia and Europe pushed north, they adapted to colder climates.
Commenting on critics' suggestions that the alleles could have spread for reasons other than the effects on the brain, Dr. Lahn said he thought such objections were in part scientifically based and in part because of a reluctance to acknowledge that selection could affect a trait as controversial as brain function.
The microcephalin and ASPM genes are known to be involved in determining brain size and so far have no other known function, he said. They are known to have been under strong selective pressure as brain size increased from monkeys to humans, and the chances seem "pretty good" the new alleles are continuing that, he said.
Dr. Lahn said he had tested Dr. Goldstein's idea of alleles' spreading through drift and found it unlikely.
Next Article in Science (1 of 10) >

BUSH AND BLACKS: He may care. But he has no reason to. And, in the end, that matters, argues Jake Weisberg. Money quote:
Because they don't see blacks as a current or potential constituency, Bush and his fellow Republicans do not respond out of the instinct of self-interest when dealing with their concerns. Helping low-income blacks is a matter of charity to them, not necessity. The condescension in their attitude intensifies when it comes to New Orleans, which is 67 percent black and largely irrelevant to GOP political ambitions. ... Considered in this light, the actions and inactions now being picked apart are readily explicable. The president drastically reduced budget requests from the Army Corps of Engineers to strengthen the levees around New Orleans because there was no effective pressure on him to agree. When the levees broke on Tuesday, Aug. 30, no urge from the political gut overrode his natural instinct to spend another day vacationing at his ranch. When Bush finally got himself to the Gulf Coast three days later, he did his hugging in Biloxi, Miss., which is 71 percent white, with a mayor, governor, and two senators who are all Republicans. Bush's memorable comments were about rebuilding Sen. Trent Lott's porch and about how he used to enjoy getting hammered in New Orleans. Only when a firestorm of criticism and political damage broke out over the federal government's callousness did Bush open his eyes to black suffering. His mom said it best, I think. She channeled the Bush id: not callousness, just obliviousness.

From the London Times
This diseased city was sunk by benign neglectMartin SamuelSo the breakdown of society in New Orleans was a one-off? Think again: it could happen in many US cities

YOU CANNOT SAY the city of New Orleans was unprepared for tragedy. Only last year, when Hurricane Ivan threatened to strike, a Louisiana official admitted the state had prepared in advance: 10,000 body bags were stored and ready to go. Benign neglect is the political term for this pragmatism, coined by Pat Moynihan, the New York Democrat senator.
With no idea how to improve a situation, government, instead of assuming responsibility for resolving it, turns a blind eye. In Moynihan’s time, benign neglect took the form of a triage system for emergency calls to the New York Fire Department, overwhelmed by the number of arson attacks in poor black areas. New Orleans has existed under the not-so-watchful eye of benign neglect for decades.
The satirical magazine The Onion once published a mocking travelogue. “Woman who ‘loves Brazil’ has only seen four square miles of it”, read the headline. Some of the syrupy tributes to Nawlins from writers who couldn’t tell a housing project from a science project were reminiscent of that. The obituaries were all Tipitina’s, voodoo, streetcars named Desire and give my regards to Bourbon Street. Package-deal country, in other words.
Professor Longhair has been dead 25 years, folks. Louis Armstrong’s trumpet sells Kodak cameras now. Essex produces more good bands and if you want to see Dr John he’s at the Royal Festival Hall and you can walk home without an armed guard. New Orleans’ French Quarter keeps the spring breakers and tequila-slammed weekenders amused but the reality is a tiny, claustrophobic tourist trap. Every visitor is given a map of a grid the size of Romford and warned never to venture outside. Beyond that lies the true city, only visited in colourless government surveys and reports, coldly documenting a place beyond care, while doing nothing to address its disease.
Last year, a plain-clothes police deputation fired 700 rounds of blanks in a New Orleans ghetto as an experiment. Nobody reported gunfire. There were 265 murders in the city in 2004 and 192 up to mid-August this year.
For every four citizens arrested for murder, only one is convicted because of the difficulty obtaining witness statements. The murder rate is ten times the national average (incredibly, an improvement on the mid-1990s, when it was 15) and of the 78 worst schools in Louisiana, 55 are in New Orleans. Of the black community that accounts for 67 per cent of the population, half exist below the poverty line.
There is no minimum wage and the waiters and dishwashers propping up the tourist trade are not well rewarded. Still, there is some good news. “The city has one of the highest murder rates in the country, but 99 per cent of it occurs in the projects,” announces an estate agent’s website, cheerily. So that’s all right, then.
The suggestion has been that the breakdown of society witnessed in New Orleans could not happen elsewhere. Wrong. The city has extreme problems of violence and deprivation, but the economic apartheid inflicted on America is a wrong turn away in most cities. Go west of Constitution between central Washington and the RFK Stadium, walk the length of Broadway, get lost in Detroit. The all-consuming civilisation that America wishes to export globally is no more than a pretty theory. Like Marxism, in practice it mutates horribly.
The New Orleans flood was not an accident waiting to happen. It had happened, 78 years ago. In 1927, the Mississippi River broke its banks in 145 places, depositing water at depths of up to 30ft over 27,000 square miles of land. Arkansas became 13 per cent water; 246 people died and 700,000 were displaced. The disaster changed American society, shifting hundreds of thousands of delta-dwelling blacks into northern cities and cementing the divisions and suspicions that benign neglect has ensured remain today. New Orleans’ (mainly white) business class pressurised the state to dynamite a levee upstream, releasing water into (mainly black) areas of the delta. Black workers were forced to work on flood relief at gunpoint, like slaves.
In his book Rising Tide, John M. Barry writes of the Mississippi tragedy: “Their struggle began as Man against nature. It became one of man against man. The flood brought with it a human storm. Honour and money collided. White and black collided. Regional and national power structures collided. The collisions shook America.” Not enough, though. Poor blacks from the South merely became poor blacks in the North. Rural poor became urban poor.
Inequality does not explain why anyone faced with the present crisis should wish to sexually assault a seven-year-old, as happened in the Louisiana Superdome, but it may help to rationalise the communal disintegration of the past week. Many of the boasts made on behalf of Western civilisation are just a handy by-product of Western money. We get along because we can afford to; in New Orleans, wealth was removed from the equation, and what values were left? This was not just a failure for central government but for social scientists, educators, mentors, role models, the supposed civilising influence we wish to impose around the world.
The estimated cost of rebuilding New Orleans and its environs is at least $26 billion (to finish the levee projects would have cost $208 million, of which the Bush Administration sent $10 million, giving new meaning to the term voodoo economics). All that remains of the city is its legacy of benign neglect. Perhaps better it stays washed away than rises once more with sickness at its failing heart.

Read this! They are the future and they will judge our generation accordingly!

3 Duke students tell of 'disgraceful' sceneBy Ray Gronberg, The Herald-SunSeptember 4, 2005 9:36 pm
DURHAM -- A trio of Duke University sophomores say they drove to New Orleans late last week, posed as journalists to slip inside the hurricane-soaked city twice, and evacuated seven people who weren't receiving help from authorities.
The group, led by South Carolina native Sonny Byrd, say they also managed to drive all the way to the New Orleans Convention Center, where they encountered scenes early Saturday evening that they say were disgraceful.
"We found it absolutely incredible that the authorities had no way to get there for four or five days, that they didn't go in and help these people, and we made it in a two-wheel-drive Hyundai," said Hans Buder, who made the trip with his roommate Byrd and another student, David Hankla.
Buder's account -- told by cell phone Sunday evening as the trio neared Montgomery, Ala., on their way home -- chronicled a three-day odyssey that began when the students, angered by the news reports they were seeing on CNN, loaded up their car with bottled water and headed for the Gulf coast to see if they could lend a hand.
The trio say they left Durham about 6 p.m. Thursday and reached Montgomery about 12 hours later. After catching 1½ hours of sleep, they reached the coast at Mobile. From there, they traveled through the Mississippi cities of Biloxi and Gulfport.
They say they elected to keep going because it seemed like Mississippi authorities had things well in hand.
Pushing on, they passed through Slidell, La., and tried to get into New Orleans by a couple of routes. Each time, police and National Guard troops turned them away. By 2 p.m. they'd wound up in Baton Rouge.
Stopping first at a Red Cross shelter and then at offices of a Baton Rouge TV station, WAFB, they eventually made their way to the campus of Louisiana State University. By 8 p.m. Friday they were working as volunteers in an emergency assistance area set up inside LSU's indoor track arena.
The students worked until about 2 a.m. Saturday, then slept on the floor of a dorm room. When they awoke, they went back to the TV station, which was hosting what Buder termed "a distribution center" for supplies.
At 2 p.m., the trio decided to head for New Orleans, Buder said. After looking around, they swiped an Associated Press identification and one of the TV station's crew shirts, and found a Kinko's where they could make copies of the ID.
They were stopped again by authorities at the edge of New Orleans, but this time were able to make it through.
"We waved the press pass, and they looked at each other, the two guards, and waved us on in," Buder said.
Inside the city, they found a surreal environment.
"It was wild," Buder said. "It really felt like it was 'Independence Day,' the movie."
The trio dodged downed trees and power lines until they happened upon Magazine Street, which runs in a semi-circle around the city parallel to and about four blocks north of the Mississippi River.
They stopped to give water to a 15-year-old boy sitting beside the road holding a sign that said "Need Water/Food," then went to the convention center.
The evacuation was basically complete by the time they arrived, at about 6:30 or 6:45 p.m. What the trio saw there horrified them.
"The only way I can describe this, it was the epicenter," Buder said. "Inside there were National Guard running around, there was feces, people had urinated, soiled the carpet. There were dead bodies. The smell will never leave me."
Buder said the students saw four or five bodies. National Guard troopers seemed to be checking the second and third floors of the building to try to secure the site.
"Anyone who knows that area, if you had a bus, it would take you no more than 20 minutes to drive in with a bus and get these people out," Buder said. "They sat there for four or five days with no food, no water, babies getting raped in the bathrooms, there were murders, nobody was doing anything for these people. And we just drove right in, really disgraceful. I don't want to get too fired up with the rhetoric, but some blame needs to be placed somewhere."
By about 7 p.m., the students made their way back to the boy on Magazine Street. He directed them to some people "who really needed to get out." The resulting evacuation began at a house at the corner of Magazine and Peniston streets.
The first group included three women and a man. The students climbed into the front seats of the four-door Hyundai, and the evacuees filled the back seat. They left the city and headed back to Baton Rouge. There they deposited the man at the LSU medical center and took the women to dinner. The women later found shelter with relatives, and the students got about four hours' sleep inside the LSU chapel.
At 6:30 a.m. Sunday, they made their second run into New Orleans, returning to the house at Magazine and Peniston streets. This time they picked up three men and headed back to Baton Rouge. Two of the men were the husbands of two of the women evacuated the night before. The students reunited them with their wives and put the two families on a bus for Texas.
Buder is from Martha's Vineyard, Mass.; Byrd is from Rock Hill, S.C.; and Hankla is from Washington, D.C.
URL for this article: http://www.herald-sun.com/durham/4-643298.html© Copyright 2005. All rights reserved. All material on heraldsun.com is copyrighted by The Durham Herald Company and may not be reproduced or redistributed in any medium except as provided in the site's Terms of Use.

The Imperfect Storm
Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit has a roundup of links on the debate over whether hurricanes are getting "worse". James Glassman argues that the frequency of giant storms has actually been decreasing over time, based on NOAA data.
Giant hurricanes are rare, but they are not new. And they are not increasing. To the contrary. Just go to the website of the National Hurricane Center and check out a table that lists hurricanes by category and decade. The peak for major hurricanes (categories 3,4,5) came in the decades of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, when such storms averaged 9 per decade. In the 1960s, there were 6 such storms; in the 1970s, 4; in the 1980s, 5; in the 1990s, 5; and for 2001-04, there were 3. Category 4 and 5 storms were also more prevalent in the past than they are now. As for Category 5 storms, there have been only three since the 1850s: in the decades of the 1930s, 1960s and 1990s.
The counterargument cited is MIT researcher Kerry Emmanuel's letter in Nature.
Theory and modelling predict that hurricane intensity should increase with increasing global mean temperatures, but work on the detection of trends in hurricane activity has focused mostly on their frequency, and shows no trend. Here I define an index of the potential destructiveness of hurricanes based on the total dissipation of power, integrated over the lifetime of the cyclone, and show that this index has increased markedly since the mid-1970s. This trend is due to both longer storm lifetimes and greater storm intensities. I find that the record of net hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with tropical sea surface temperature, reflecting well-documented climate signals, including multi-decadal oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and global warming. My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in tropical cyclone destructive potential, and—taking into account an increasing coastal population—a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty-first century.
Emmanuel has an earlier version of his global warming thesis on his website entitled Anthropogenic Effects on Tropical Cyclone Activity. In that earlier paper, Emmanuel had not yet reached any definite conclusions about the effect of global warming on the frequency, energy and distribution of hurricanes.
The theory of tropical cyclones, in its present state of development, yields some useful insights into the relationship between tropical cyclone activity and climate. There is a rigorous upper limit to the intensity that hurricanes can achieve, and this limit can be easily determined from known states of the atmosphere and ocean. Elementary considerations show that this limit increases with the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, but the magnitude of the increase that would result from the present injection of anthropogenic greenhouse gases into the atmosphere is unknown, owing to large uncertainties about feedbacks in the climate system. Moreover, very few storms approach their limiting intensity, and the processes responsible for keeping storm intensities below their limiting value are poorly understood and not likely to be well simulated by present GCM's. The frequency with which tropical cyclones occur is a product of the prevalence of known necessary conditions for their formation and the frequency and strength of disturbances that have the potential of initiating tropical cyclones. Neither basic theory nor numerical climate simulation is well enough advanced to predict how tropical cyclone frequency might change with changing climate, and both give conflicting results on the change of tropical cyclone frequency on doubling atmospheric. There is no physical basis, however, for claims that the total area prone to tropical cyclogenesis would increase. The new field of paleotempestology entails the use of a variety of techniques for deducing the long-term history of hurricane activity from the geological record. Pushing the record of landfalling tropical cyclones well back into prehistory, perhaps even to the last ice age, may be the key to understanding from an empirical standpoint the relationship between tropical cyclone activity and climate. We should do what we can to encourage this endeavor.
To be perfectly fair, the letter cited in Nature does not assert that the frequency of hurricanes is increasing. Emmanuel's letter says: "work on the detection of trends in hurricane activity has focused mostly on their frequency, and shows no trend." Emmanuel does argue that storm lifetimes and intensities has increased over time and that his data suggests it is correlated with "tropical sea surface temperature" which is in turn a function of "multi-decadal oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and global warming". A New York Times article citing Emmanuel says:
In an article this month in the journal Nature, Kerry A. Emanuel, a hurricane expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote that global warming might have already had some effect. The total power dissipated by tropical cyclones in the North Atlantic and North Pacific increased 70 to 80 percent in the last 30 years, he wrote. But even that seemingly large jump is not what has been pushing the hurricanes of the last two years, Dr. Emanuel said, adding, "What we see in the Atlantic is mostly the natural swing."
There are several issues which should be individually highlighted before considering their interaction. The first is frequency. If hurricanes are considered to be natural heat pumps and hurricane frequency is constant or declining, individual storms will logically pack more energy to pump the additional available heat. But this additional heat is apparently contributed by non-human causes: Emmanuel says, "What we see in the Atlantic is mostly the natural swing." The third factor is storm distribution and it enters the picture in two ways. The first is where storms arise and track. The second, already mentioned by Emmanuel is the "increasing coastal population" of the world. What really gets people's attentions isn't storms, but landfalling storms. The most powerful storms on record remain relatively unknown as long as they are confined to the open ocean. Wikipedia notes:
The most intense storm on record was Typhoon Tip in the northwestern Pacific Ocean in 1979, which had a minimum pressure of only 870 mb and maximum sustained windspeeds of 190 mph (305 km/h). Fortunately, it weakened before striking Japan. Tip does not, however, hold alone the record for fastest sustained winds in a cyclone; Typhoon Keith in the Pacific, and Hurricane Camille and Hurricane Allen in the North Atlantic currently share this record as well, although recorded windspeeds that fast are suspect, since most monitoring equipment is likely to be destroyed by such conditions.
How strong was Typhoon Tip? For comparison, Katrina had a central pressure of 902 mb in midocean against 870 for Tip. (The lower the windpressure the worse and remember the scale is logarithmic.) One weather site estimates that if a storm like Tip "hit south Florida directly, tropical storm force winds would be felt as far north as Charlotte, North Carolina and as far south as Merida, Mexico and Kingston, Jamaica". Katrina became the most destructive US storm in history not by virtue of its power, but by a combination of power and geographical distribution. (But not in lives lost. That dubious honor belongs to the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 which killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people)
It should be pretty clear from the foregoing that Glassman's point about the decreasing frequency of hurricanes and Emmanuel's argument for their increasing power are not necessarily in conflict. They may both be true. But what of Global Warming? If, as Emmanuel himself suggests, the increased ocean heat is dominated by "the natural swing" even the most strenuous efforts at reducing the consumption of fossil fuels would bring meager results. What's left is the distribution variable. Emmanuel notes there is "an increasing coastal population", and which implies ceteris paribus, that typhoon damage will monotonically increase even if there were no additions to storm frequency or power. One of the reasons that typhoons in the northern Indian Ocean, comprising India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Myanmar, and Pakistan kill the most people year after year is because of population concentrations in the low-lying coastal areas. One of the reasons Katrina was so devastating was the location of Gulf coast cities and oil rigs. This suggests that zoning and resistant architecture and contingency planning might do far more to limit disaster than immense investments in windmills or solar panels.
(Speculation alert.) Environmentalists might take note of how inhabitants in the little-known Batanes Islands in the Philippines cope with typhoons. The Batanes are so small they are repeatedly struck by typhoons undiminished by the landfall effect. The inhabitants of the "typhoon islands", the Ivatans, developed a unique form of architecture that simply enabled them to ride out the storm. In other words, they used technology to adapt to the forces of nature. But they are indigenous people, so that's OK.

New Orleans left to the dead and dyingALLEN

G. BREEDAssociated Press
NEW ORLEANS - Thousands more bedraggled refugees were bused and airlifted to salvation Saturday, leaving the heart of New Orleans to the dead and dying, the elderly and frail stranded too many days without food, water or medical care.
No one knows how many were killed by Hurricane Katrina's floods and how many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating among the ruined city, crumpled on wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.
And the dying goes on - at the convention center and an airport triage center, where bodies were kept in a refrigerated truck.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Saturday that she expected the death toll to reach the thousands. And Craig Vanderwagen, rear admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service, said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.
Touring the airport triage center, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a physician, said "a lot more than eight to 10 people are dying a day."
Most were those too sick or weak to survive. But not all.
Charles Womack, a 30-year-old roofer, said he saw one man beaten to death and another commit suicide at the Superdome. Womack was beaten with a pipe and being treated at the airport triage center.
"One guy jumped off a balcony. I saw him do it. He was talking to a lady about it. He said it reminded him of the war and he couldn't leave," he said.
Three babies died at the convention center from heat exhaustion, said Mark Kyle, a medical relief provider.
Some 20,000 refugees had been waiting for rescue for nearly a week at the Superdome, with as many as 25,000 more at the New Orleans convention center. National Guard Lt. Col. Bernard McLaughlin said the number may have been closer to 5,000 to 7,000.
The last 300 refugees at the Superdome climbed aboard buses Saturday, eliciting cheers from members of the Texas National Guard who were guarding the facility.
At the convention center, thousands of refugees dragged their meager belongings to buses, the mood more numb than jubilant. Yolando Sanders, who had been stuck at the convention center for five days, was among those who filed past corpses to reach the buses.
"Anyplace is better than here," she said.
"People are dying over there."
Nearby, a woman lay dead in a wheelchair on the front steps. A man was covered in a black drape with a dry line of blood running to the gutter, where it had pooled. Another had lain on a chaise lounge for four days, his stocking feet peeking out from under a quilt.
By mid-afternoon, only pockets of stragglers remained in the streets around the convention center, and New Orleans paramedics began carting away the dead.
A once-vibrant city of 480,000 people, overtaken just days ago by floods, looting, rape and arson, was now an empty, sodden tomb.
The exact number of dead won't be known for some time. Survivors were still being plucked from roofs and shattered highways across the city. President Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast on Saturday.
"There are people in apartments and hotels that you didn't know were there," Army Brig. Gen. Mark Graham said.
The overwhelming majority of those stranded in the post-Katrina chaos were those without the resources to escape - and, overwhelmingly, they were black.
"The first few days were a natural disaster. The last four days were a man-made disaster," said Phillip Holt, 51, who was rescued from his home Saturday with his partner and three of their aging Chihuahuas. They left a fourth behind they couldn't grab in time.
Tens of thousands of people had been evacuated from the city, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry said as many as 120,000 hurricane refugees were in 97 shelters across the state, with another 100,000 in Texas hotels and motels. Others were in Tennessee, Indiana and Arkansas.
Emergency workers at the Astrodome were told to expect 10,000 new arrivals daily for the next three days.
Thousands of people remained at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, where officials turned a Delta Blue terminal into a triage unit. Officials said 3,000 to 5,000 people had been treated at the triage unit, but fewer than 200 remain. Others throughout the airport awaited transport out of the city.
"In the beginning it was like trying to lasso an octopus. When we got here it was overwhelming," said Jake Jacoby, a physician helping run the center.
Airport director Roy Williams said about 30 people had died, some of them elderly and ill. The bodies were being kept in refrigerated trucks as a temporary morgue.
At the convention center, people stumbled toward the helicopters, dehydrated and nearly passing out from exhaustion. Many had to be carried by National Guard troops and police on stretchers. And some were being pushed up the street on office chairs and on dollies.
Nita LaGarde, 105, was pushed down the street in her wheelchair as her nurse's 5-year-old granddaughter, Tanisha Blevin, held her hand. The pair spent two days in an attic, two days on an interstate island and the last four days on the pavement in front of the convention center.
"They're good to see," LaGarde said, with remarkable gusto as she waited to be loaded onto a gray Marine helicopter. She said they were sent by God. "Whatever He has for you, He'll take care of you. He'll sure take care of you."
LaGarde's nurse, Ernestine Dangerfield, 60, said LaGarde had not had a clean adult diaper in more than two days. "I just want to get somewhere where I can get her nice and clean," she said.
Around the corner, a motley fleet of luxury tour buses and yellow school buses lined up two deep to pick up some of the healthier refugees. National Guardsmen confiscated a gun, knives and letter openers from people before they got on the buses.
"It's been a long time coming," Derek Dabon, 29, said as he waited to pass through a guard checkpoint. "There's no way I'm coming back. To what? That don't make sense. I'm going to start a new life."
Hillary Snowton, 40, sat on the sidewalk outside with a piece of white sheet tied around his face like a bandanna as he stared at a body that had been lying on a chaise lounge for four days, its stocking feet peeking out from under a quilt.
"It's for the smell of the dead body," he said of the sheet. His brother-in-law, Octave Carter, 42, said it has been "every day, every morning, breakfast lunch and dinner looking at it."
When asked why he didn't move further away from the corpse, Carter replied, "it stinks everywhere, Blood."
Dan Craig, director of recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said it could take up to six months to get the water out of New Orleans, and the city would then need to dry out, which could take up to three more months.
A Saks Fifth Avenue store billowed smoke Saturday, as did rows of warehouses on the east bank of the Mississippi River, where corrugated roofs buckled and tiny explosions erupted. Gunfire - almost two dozen shots - broke out in the French Quarter overnight.
In the French Quarter, some residents refused or did not know how to get out. Some holed up with guns.
As the warehouse district burned, Ron Seitzer, 61, washed his dirty laundry in the even dirtier waters of the Mississippi River and said he didn't know how much longer he could stay without water or power, surrounded by looters.
"I've never even had a nightmare or a beautiful dream about this," he said as he watched the warehouses burn. "People are just not themselves."
---
Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill, Robert Tanner, Melinda Deslatte, Brett Martel and Mary Foster contributed to this report.

Dark Days

America is witnessing the dark side of modern civilization, institutional resistance to bad news and a general unwillingness to face probable natural catastrophes. The Bush Administration appears to be lurching to status as “Seat Warmer” until January 2009.

The media is in search of sensation is hyping the general anarchy in New Orleans. Criminals and scam artists are always around, tragedy reveals them soon enough. The population is reacting and acting out as expected. The Governor and Mayor are doing what you’d expect. Abusing them solves nothing.

Finally the entire country has to develop tough love in such calamities and be affectionate where it is practical and effective. The cruel reality is a substantial population of uneducated, often drug addicted, and generally volatile persons populate parts of New Orleans as in other cities.
Black communities contained by drugs, crank religion and a violent street culture are common in the US.
England, France and Belgium treat North Africans the same. We are not different from others in our casual neglect of the desperate poor. Gangs thrive in decay and New Orleans is rotten to the max, so expect snipers as pissed off drug dealers take umbrage as they see their profits drift away. Expect rape as humiliated young males seek retribution and reassertion of their prowess. Do not expect rationality or any kind of altruism from a community struggling in the best of times.

I recognize a tendency to seek scapegoats and a popular willingness to skip hard facts and evade hard work.
Will America rebuild New Orleans, will the blacks get new homes? Don’t count on it!
The Bush Administration has a war to win and they will not permit anything to get in the way.
Whomever is elected in 2008 will have a tough presidency.

Another hurricane will come, add more damage will be inflicted and well, the cycle starts all over again.

The United States has a dense population now, tragedies will be greater and we will suffer until we develop a coherent plan of action and develop the right attitude to match it.

I am not indifferent, I am saddened by what has happened and I am truly distressed over a president unable or unwilling to show some kind of genuine compassion. GW Bush’s presidency will be recalled as remarkably ineffectual, strangely unable to offer sympathy. Everything with the president is contrived, calculated and insincere.
Perhaps 911 did affect him or perhaps he can’t abide intense emotions? Often recovering alcoholics develops a passivity as a way of coping. GW Bush is not evil or a class bigot. But his handlers seem oblivious to how others see their guy. Let’s all hope there are no more hurricanes this year!