August 29, 2005

8/29: Katrina And The Waves

The only story that matters this a.m. is Hurricane Katrina. Where many had assumed the city could have been utterly destroyed, it seems clear at this point that it has been spared the worst: there will probably still be a New Orleans tomorrow. But the city has sustained massive damage and flooding already, tens of thousands are riding it out inside the compromised Superdome, and the rest have fled. It's big news today, but the area may be uninhabitable for weeks after the storm passes.

HURRICANE: You're Gonna Need A Bigger Boat

A few Katrina-related resources:

• Jeff Jarvis and Michelle Malkin both have impressive round-ups of hurricane blogging.
• New Orleans Times-Picayune has a breaking-news blog, which provides reports from the area.
• In a headline, a Daily Kos writer advises the best way to help out: "Give Money Only, and Give to the Red Cross."
• See Flickr's Katrina page for amateur photos related to the hurricane.
• An apparently still-functional outdoor webcam on the LSU campus.

Blogger reax:

• >> Steve Gregory reports at one of the Weather Underground blogs, the worst has probably been avoided: "Just before heading for some sleep -- I sent an advisory around 2AM indicating that Katrina was going to weaken a bit, and that it would skirt the east of New Orleans. That's has in fact happened, sparing the city of New Orleans from a truly catastrophic event." At the same site, Jeff Masters observes: "New Orleans will not suffer large loss of life from Katrina."
  
  

  >> One of the most popular links has been to the NWS alert, which Poliblog's Steven Taylor calls "so shocking in its language, that even though it can be found on their server, it reads like a hoax." A sample: "MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED." And: "POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS." Viking Pundit calls it "almost hysterical." A CNN report suggested in its headline that "Katrina may be 'our Asian tsunami'" -- as several bloggers quote it -- before apparently being retitled. VodkaPundit's Stephen Green compares Katrina to 9/11.
  

  >> Bloggers in the area write matter-of-factly about the grim situation. N.O. Pundit: "There is a Schroedinger's Cat quality to watching the spinning red ball: does the New Orleans that I know even exist right now, hours before landfall? Surely the buildings are there right now and the people who remained are fine right now. But in a sense, some of those buildings have already fallen and some of those people have already met tragedy." Paul from Wizbang, a New Orleanian: "New Orleanians have a sense of humor... Less face it, to put up with our politicians you need to... But that was on display in the hotel lobby where people were greeting each other, 'So, where did you used to live?' I met a woman who used to live uptown. I told her I used to live in Metairie." NOLA Blogs has a list of bloggers from the area. Rogers Cadenhead: "Looking around New Orleans with GeoURL, I've yet to find a blogger sticking around for Hurricane Katrina." On 8/27, before it was clear how serious the storm would be, Sporked could write: "I'm sure this will be great fun." Drudge Report-like Dead Pelican reported at 6:41 a.m.: "THE DEAD PELICAN MAY BE LOSING POWER SHORTLY. WE WILL STAY ONLINE AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. GOOD LUCK TO ALL, AND GOD BLESS." NOLA-based Ernie the Attorney, during the weekend: "So I tried to leave New Orleans today at 12:30 pm but after 4 hours of driving I had only made it 15 miles. I was alone and tired so I decided the safe play was to return. It's kind of sad when the 'safe play' is to go back and wait to be pounded by the gnashing fury of a Category 5 hurricane."
  

  >> For more than a few lefty bloggers, Pres. Bush bears a lot of responsibility for the suffering that is expected. Diarist Patricia Taylor at Daily Kos: "Historically, it is the National Guard, along with other emergency personnel, who attempt to provide emergency services to the community in disaster relief situations like Katrina. And where are these National Guard right now? Iraq." Wampum calls it "A Bush-made catastrophe in the making..." Skippy the Bush Kangaroo and Swing State Project make similar points. So does Steve Gilliard, who writes: "The next closest thing to this is a nuclear explosion." AMERICAblog suggests that New Orleans could get more attention from the Bush admin. by renaming the storm "Hurricane Terri"; a little Photoshop work places Terri Schiavo's face over the eye of the storm. TalkLeft: "One other point: we need to stop destroying the Louisiana wetland which serves as a buffer." Wizbang's Paul picks up the Daily Kos diary, and adds this comment: "Actually if the dumbass used google news they would have known the Guard is in the Superdome." Liberal BooMan Tribune: "It looks like it is time to put partisanship and politics aside. Dealing with this calamity is going to require a unified approach from all Americans."
  

  >> In 5/05, Chris Mooney wrote a piece for The American Prospect titled "Thinking Big About Hurricanes" and eerily subtitled "It's time to get serious about saving New Orleans." But Mooney wasn't the only one to write such a piece, as several bloggers link to an '02 Science World article, and then a few others to a public radio report, both addressing the possible destruction of New Orleans by hurricane. At his personal blog, Mooney raises other issues not being discussed: "Sea Level Rise," "Coastal Wetlands Losses, and "The Hurricane-Global Warming Link."
  

  >> Brendan Loy stayed up all night blogging the storm, and is back at it again now. LA-based Josh Britton has been blogging around the clock. And others around the country are paying close attention as well. Just a few among the many: Daily Inklings; Yippie-Ki-Yay!; Lean Left; Phog Blog; The Jawa Report; Politickal; Michael Totten; People Get Ready; Donklephant; California Conservative; Angry Bear; Backcountry Conservative; Blogs of War; Baldilocks; Talking Points Memo.

SHEEHAN: The Road Ahead

As mentioned above, Sheehan's protest is not the major story it once was, but it still rates a mention on the front pages of Eschaton and Daily Kos this a.m. Liberal radio talker Brad Friedman of BradBlog, has been in Crawford with Sheehan and her fellow protesters all weekend, broadcasting multiple special shows. At Democrats.com, David Swanson shares his experience of going down to Crawford. Big-name visitors to "Camp Casey" this weekend included Al Sharpton and actor Martin Sheen.

NRO's Eric Pfeiffer reports from Crawford: "Cindy Sheehan has admitted she will only travel for two days on her own 24 day bus tour to Washington DC after protesters leave Crawford" on 8/31, heading to DC for a planned anti-war demonstration on 9/24. More: "Sheehan cited 'previous speaking engagements' as her reason for not being able to travel with the proletariat protesters. The first day of her tour which is "not political" will target" House Maj. Leader Tom DeLay.

Little Green Footballs posts 2 photographs of the same event -- Sheehan kneeling before crosses -- which are wildly different in effect: "Here's a touching scene, featuring Cindy Sheehan and the Reverend Al Sharpton, in front of crosses, looking solemn and sad. Now let's zoom out and see the media swarm around this manufactured event..."

Mimicking taunts from liberal bloggers about pictures showing few protesters on the pro-Bush side, conservative blog round-up GOPINION posts photos of Sheehan sitting alone, with the headline: "Where Are All The Protesters?" GOPINION links to a Right Wing Nut House post arguing that the protest is rather small: "It's like this 'mass movement' exists only on a Hollywood sound stage. When the cameras are turned off, it disappears like smoke from a fog machine wafting up into the rafters."

Liberal radio talker Taylor Marsh criticizes Sheehan's call for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq: "An immediate pull-out of troops is simply not a moral, or to put it more bluntly, an American interest option. So, it's with all due respect that I say to Cindy Sheehan ... What part of catastrophe don't you understand?"

WHITE HOUSE '08: Step By Step

Conservative Baseball Crank argues, as per the post's header: "How A Social Moderate Can Win The GOP Nomination In Six Easy Steps" The steps are: "1. Don't Run Against The Social Right"; "2. Federalism, Federalism, Federalism"; "3. Promise to Appoint Conservative, Pro-Democracy Judges"; "4. Show Some Backbone In Other Areas"; "5. Do No Harm"; "6. Nominate A Conservative Running Mate." He concludes: "[M]aybe Rudy Giuliani is the guy who can do it, and maybe he's not. ... But I do believe that, by following the road map laid out above, a candidate who, for example, personally supports legal abortion could nonetheless win the GOP presidential nomination, and do so with his or her principles more or less intact."

Left-libertarian Arthur Silber: "As the Bush foreign policy self-immolates and disintegrates more with every day that passes, we are witnessing a political and moral vacuum. ... In this atmosphere, the politician who stepped up ... could become a national leader with an enormous following in record time. It could make him or her the next President. Except for Feingold, no one has even tried to rise to the challenge -- and all the rest of them affirmatively avoid it."

SENATE '06: Hackett Talk

At MyDD, Chris Bowers posts a map of ex-House candidate Paul Hackett's donors -- they are spread all across the country -- and writes that Hackett would be the "crowning jewel" in the DSCC's recruitment for SEN '06. Cleveland-based liberal hawk Democracy Guy disagrees: "I've never seen a rationale for a US Senate campaign that forgets to actually discuss the state in question, let alone that the candidate hasn't won a single race higher than city council. Worse yet, as with every single other utterance from the liberal blogosphere, there is no mention of the post 9/11 dynamic in the electorate, which will be the very first hurdle any US Senate candidate from Ohio will have to clear."

IRAQ: Double-Take

New York Times has a full translation of the Iraqi constitution. Power Line: "I'm still working my way through it, but it generally looks good, despite being a little 'liberal,' in the American sense, in places." Captain's Quarters, on the constitution going forward above Sunni complaints: "Had they voted in the last election, they could have had their own representatives in the negotiations to tell them that [supporting the constitution is for the best]. Hopefully Sunni voters will have seen the idiocy of their boycott and what they lost as a result, and will not make the same mistake twice."

New York Times reports, Army contracting official Bunnatine Greenhouse, who in '03 criticized some of Halliburton's Iraq contracts, has been demoted; although she once had "stellar" performance ratings, her reviews "became negative at roughly the time she began objecting" to the contracts. Rising Hegemon: "Just in time to be ignored because of a Hurricane and the so-called Iraqi Constitution..."

On 8/25, independent journalist Michael Yon posted "Gates of Fire," an account of a firefight in Mosul, in which he temporarily stopped reporting and started fighting, against a terrorist who had been caught and released previously. Technorati counts 260+ links to the specific post and BlogPulse counts 180+. Conservative Day By Day cartoon compares the hotel-bound AP reporters in Baghdad unfavorably with Yon.

Blackfive reports that Army CoS Peter Schoomaker is setting forth new guidelines for dealing with soldiers' blogs, and quotes the message in full. The Army is concerned that terrorists are reading the soldiers' blog entries to try and determine weaknesses.

Right-leaning Gregory Djerejian writes a post titled "The Flypaper Fallacy: 10 Reasons Not To Believe the Hype" Number one: "It assumes a finite number of jihadis willing to die."

THE MARCH OF BLOGS: A Blog Named Sue

SEO Book blogger Aaron Wall is being sued by Internet marketing company Traffic-Power.com over comments made by others at his blog. The Blog Herald reports: "If successful the case has the potential to cause major upheaval in the blogosphere as comments would need to be filtered in cases where there was even the slightest chance someone might sue or find the comment offensive or disagree with it."

Pajamas Media, the yet-to-debut news service/ad agency by Roger L. Simon and Charles Johnson, announces a name change. They write, the name originated as a response to now-CNN/then-CBS exec Jonathan Klein's Memogate-era dismissal of bloggers, but "as we have gone forward putting together this company, it has become clear to us that we do not wish to be defined merely as gadflies in opposition to mainstream media." The About Us page also mentions: "Key details of the plan are still under wraps. For now, the co-founders will say only that there will be a significant unveiling in the fall of 2005."

BlogAds founder Henry Copeland announces, in an e-mail: "The current Blogads logo is terrible -- I can say that because I drew it in March 2002, expecting the scribble to last two days. So please tell your designer friends about our need for a brilliant new logo. Winning designer gets $1000."

Over the weekend, UVA's Sorenson Institute held a Summit on Blogging and Democracy in the Commonwealth, which was attended by several high-profile VA bloggers. In attendance were bloggers from Raising Kaine, Commonwealth Conservative; The Red Stater; Shaun Kenney; Bacon's Rebellion; Waldo Jaquith. Inspired by discussion at the conf., Will Vehrs at Bacon's Rebellion attempts a "blogger code of conduct." QandO's Jon Henke doesn't see the point: "I've managed to make it 30 years so far without writing down my formal code of ethics. I'm certainly not going to do it so I can petition the legislature for the right to speak freely."

In an attempt to head off disruptive posters, Daily Kos', Hunter proposes that readers rate posts that are "pointlessly ad hominem" or "unintendedly sexist" a 2 on a 5-point scale. Not so low as to suggest the poster for banning, but low enough to send a message; he calls it the "Hunter 2." He polls readers for their opinions of the idea; over half the respondents approve, but over a third doubt it will work.

BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Re-Fighting Florida

This weekend, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman appended to his column a correction to a previous column, where he had cited evidence that then-VP Gore would have won the WH under most counting scenarios. His initial column had set off a round of complaints from conservative bloggers, and this correction only brings more complaints. Patterico's Pontifications has a lengthy post attempting to rebut Krugman's claims. Michelle Malkin and Tom Maguire join in, although after a series of updates, Maguire makes a partial defense of Krugman.

At NRO's Media Blog, Stephen Spruiell disputes Washington Post online columnist Dan Froomkin's assertion that no war critics are calling for an immediate withdrawal. "I normally avoid going into Froomkin in detail, because that daily chore would leave room for little else on the Media Blog. In the interests of my sanity, I will leave it to somebody else to start a FroomkinWatch blog. Any takers?"

BACKLOG: Vincent

Univ. of MI prof Juan Cole defends his comments on the murder of journalist Steven Vincent in Iraq, in light of fierce criticism by Vincent's widow, Lisa Ramaci-Vincent (see 8/23 Blogometer). Writes Cole: "I am clarifying my remarks because Vincent's widow is circulating a misleading characterization of them. I understand the grief of a bereaved widow, and I am not interested in arguing with her. But Vincent does not get a pass on being criticized simply because he is dead." Cole: "His death was most unfortunate, and I felt it. He was a colleague of sorts. But he behaved foolishly and frankly ignorantly." But lefty UCLA prof Mark A.R. Kleiman is incensed by Cole's response, writing a 10-point reply: "Perhaps you can explain how you square your contemptuous dismissal of Ms. Ramaci-Vincent with your criticism of George W. Bush's treatment of Cindy Sheehan? ... The main difference I can see between the two cases is that Mr. Bush hasn't insulted Ms. Sheehan's dead son, while you have insulted Ms. Ramaci-Vincent's dead husband." More: "In the course of criticizing Mr. Vincent's conduct ... you never find occasion to criticize the conduct of his murderers ... It's fair to ask whose side you take: that of the victims, or that of the perpetrators?"

INTRODUCING: Chancellor Of The Chequer

Righty Pejman Yousefzadeh has closed up shop at Pejmanesque, and moved his primary blogging efforts to A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days, which is a group blog at which he is the primary contributor. Others include QandO's Henke, Patrick Frey from Patterico's Pontifications, and Leon H from Macho Nachos and RedState, to which Yousefzadeh also contributes. The title comes from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Honey, I Shrunk The President

Liberal BAGnewsNotes posts a photo of Bush walking out in front of a blue curtain in a hangar, looking a bit small in comparison: "Often, a news image will lead the wire because it captures some underlying truth about the political moment at hand. ... Because the meeting took place in Bush's aircraft hanger in Crawford, it seems the photographer's vantage worked substantially to the President's disadvantage. If Bush's policies are shrinking in popularity, this image might well serve as visual documentation."

LEST WE FORGET: Regrettably Pro-War?

Liberal Fafblog "interviews" several top Senate Dems about the situation in Iraq:

FAFBLOG: So what's up, Democrats?
JOE BIDEN : What's up is the war in Iraq, which is terribly mismanaged, Fafnir.
FB: Oh wow! Are you guys against the war, too?
JOE LIEBERMAN : Oh no, we're not AGAINST the war!
HARRY REID : We're all FOR it!
BIDEN: It's the best worst idea in the world, and we're gonna run with it to victory!
HILLARY CLINTON : Watch me eat a bug!
FB: So we can actually win the war! That's great news!
LIEBERMAN: Yes!
REID: Sort of!
BIDEN: Maybe!
CLINTON: I can wrestle a buffalo!

Posted by at August 29, 2005 01:01 PM