You Don't Need A Weatherman

To know which way the wind blows.

It's been blowing since yesterday. I know my wind chimes haven't stopped ringing.

This is what the American 24/7 cable channels call 'severe weather'.

Except it's Alberta. It's Edmonton. It's November. When we should have snow. We have above average temperatures. Rain. And now wind storms.

90 km an hour that's a hurricane by any other name. Except we are landlocked.

I call it Weird Weather.

Wind warning for: City of Edmonton-St. Albert-Sherwood Park

Issued at 5:11 AM MST TUESDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2007

STRONG NORTHWEST WINDS OF 60 GUSTING TO 90 KM/H HAVE DEVELOPED.

AN INTENSE LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM MOVED EASTWARD THROUGH CENTRAL ALBERTA OVERNIGHT. IN THE WAKE OF THE SYSTEM GUSTY WESTERLY WINDS HAVE DEVELOPED AND WINDS OF 60 GUSTING TO 90 KM/H ARE EXPECTED ACROSS THE WARNING REGIONS UNTIL MID AFTERNOON.

PLEASE REFER TO THE LATEST PUBLIC FORECASTS FOR FURTHER DETAILS.


SEE:

Environmentalists Caused Wildfires

Black and White

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Environmentalists Caused Wildfires

So said Mike Brown, ex-head of FEMA during the Katrina debacle, on FOX News. He blamed the California wildfires on environmentalists; he claimed they opposed selective burns of brush and bush areas. While he stated that it is only natural for people to want to move into wilderness areas, including those prone to wildfires. Talk about Republican spin.

Yep environmental issues are behind the wild fires but not environmentalists. As Californian's are finding out that old adage Think Globally (warming ) Act Locally (put out wild fires). And the excuse that the fires were arson does nothing to halt the fact that they were fueled by Santa Ana wind's and as a result of climactic changes brought on by Global Warming.

Al Gore though art avenged.


SEE:

Black and White

Blaming Others

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Black and White

What a difference it makes in America if you are rich, white and live in California, rather than poor, black and live in New Orleans.

Bush Travels To California To See Fires
President Bush flew to fire-ravaged California Thursday with promises of federal help, supportive words for those who've lost home and businesses and thanks to overworked firefighters.

After Katrina he failed to visit New Orleans until the anniversary of 9/11. Weeks after the hurricane hit. And then it was for another photo op like 9/11.


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Blaming Others

The reason for the failures in Iraq are not George Bush's fault they are the fault of others.

Just whose brilliant idea was it to disband the Iraqi army? The former U.S. boss of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer, says President Bush knew about and supported his plans to dissolve Saddam's military, according to letters he released to the New York Times yesterday.

Annoyed that Bush was quoted in a recent book as suggesting that he had gone a bit Rambo out in the desert, Bremer disclosed his spring 2003 correspondence with the president.

The impetus for Bremer's action was Bush's interview with Robert Draper, author of the new book "Dead Certain," in which the president sounded as if he had been taken aback by the decision.

"The policy had been to keep the army intact; didn't happen," Bush told Draper. When Draper asked how he had reacted when the policy changed, Bush replied, "Yeah, I can't remember. I'm sure I said, 'This is the policy, what happened?'"

Rumsfeld also serves as a major, if absent, character in today's sweeping USA Today investigation tracking the Defense Department's slowness to equip the troops in Iraq with protective gear like body armor and devices to jam signals from detonators.

Even as the president and Pentagon officials claimed they were doing all they could to get these items for the soldiers, the paper digs up documents suggesting that "the military cut or underfunded several programs and moved so slowly and grudgingly that members of Congress" had to step in with "extraordinary measures."

Interviewed officials complained of a refusal among top military brass at the beginning of the war to believe that the fighting would be anything but brief. Once things started to get bogged down, there was a "peacetime mentality" guiding acquisition of "up-armored vehicles," the paper reports.

In one particularly striking example, Pentagon officials "balked at pleas from battlefield commanders and their own analysts to provide the lifesaving MRAP, or Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle, for patrols and combat missions." Only after Rummy left and Robert Gates took over did the Pentagon embrace the MRAP.

Draper's account of the bulk of Bush's presidency sheds light on a loyal and secretive inner circle that, at least privately, was not always on the same page. Draper tells of an April 2006 dinner at which Bush asked aides for a show of hands on whether his divisive defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, should be fired.

The vote: 7-4 to get rid of him, with Bush siding with those who wanted him kept on for the time being. Rumsfeld was replaced after the elections that fall switched control of the House and Senate to Democrats.

White House aides who wanted Rumsfeld out were privately dismayed when retired generals called publicly for his ouster, fearing that would steel Bush's resolve to keep his defence chief, the book says.

Bush, without addressing that meeting, suggested to the author that the ex-generals did get under his skin. "My reaction was, 'No military guy is gonna tell a civilian how to react,"' he said.

Just like his failure to deal with Hurricane Katrina.

The latest book published about George W Bush reveals that the US president was not fully engaged in key policy areas, including the disbandment of the Iraqi army and the build-up to Hurricane Katrina.

At a briefing at his Crawford ranch the day before the hurricane made landfall, Mr Bush was "gassed" after an 80-minute bike ride and asked no supplementary questions following a briefing from advisers. He merely assured them the federal government was prepared to help.

SEE:

Daddy's Boy

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Double Trouble

Two Hurricanes have hit Mexico and Nicaragua , but don't expect the folks at CNN and Fox who do their Wild Weather/Wicked Weather reports to make much about this since all they care about is their gulf coast. There will be no wall to wall coverage, just updates.

Oh yes and remember last year when the hurricane season was milder and all the climate change deniers rejoiced at how wrong predictions were for a nasty hurricane season. Well this year it is a nasty hurricane season as predicted due to climate change. However since they have not hit the U.S. corporate America could care less.

The U.S. still has not paid up its funding obligations to Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch.

Hurricanes swept ashore in Nicaragua and Mexico within hours of each other Tuesday, the first time Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes have made landfall on the same day since the National Hurricane Center began keeping records in the 1940s.

Felix arrived first, punishing sparsely populated northern Nicaragua with 160 mph winds before dawn, then plowing inland across Honduras, threatening floods and mudslides in a region still recovering from Hurricane Mitch, which killed nearly 11,000 people in 1998.

More than 1,900 miles away, Henriette swelled to hurricane strength Tuesday afternoon and roared onto the southern tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula, an area thick with some of Latin America's swankiest hotels and vacation homes.

Tuesday was historic for two reasons: It was the first time on record that two Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes made landfall in the same year, with Felix coming two weeks after Hurricane Dean slammed into southern Mexico.

And Atlantic and Pacific hurricanes had never made landfall on the same date, according to records that began in 1949.

A NOAA map on Tuesday shows hurricanes Henriette, left center, and Felix. There were no reports of serious damage from Henriette, but Felix cut a swath of destruction as it headed into Honduras.

This storm will now be true test of the Harpers Development Agenda with his new found interest in Latin America and the Caribbean. Lets see how quick he responds to this disaster.

As they say there is always a silver lining in every storm cloud this case Alvaro Orozco who has gone into hiding, may not be deported to Nicaragua since his home may not be there anymore. Wishful thinking.




SEE:

Hurricane and Howard Dean

Mother Prevails

Remember Katrina and Rita?

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After Katrina

George W. Bush failed to be on site in New York immediately after 9/11. He failed again when Katrina devastated New Orleans.

On September 14, 2001 he cruised over WTC site in a helicopter, shades of flying over New Orleans, and does his famous photo-op with the Firemen at Ground Zero.

==Around mid-afternoon on Friday, Bush finally appears in New York City with a large Congressional delegation and takes a quick helicopter tour of the devastated area with Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki as warplanes fly overhead. Afterwards, Bush visits Ground Zero, where he engages in a rare impromptu exchange with a crowd. As rescue personnel chant “U.S.A! U.S.A.!,” Bush climbs atop a small pile of rubble and uses a bullhorn to thank them for their efforts. When some workers call out that they can’t hear, Bush responds "I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you, and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!" The crowd reacts with cheers and more chants of “U.S.A.!” Workers at Ground Zero are clearly encouraged by Bush’s visit, but there is also annoyance over the two hour shutdown of rescue work caused by the extremely tight security measures. [nyt.Sep.14.2001 / cnn.Sep.14.2001 / dmn.Sep.15.2001]

After talking to state officials and emergency teams in New York, the president flew to Camp David for what a senior US official called a "decision-making meeting" later on Saturday with top advisors.

September 14: President Bush declares a national emergency. The Senate adopts a resolution authorizing the use of U.S. armed forces against those responsible for the attacks. President Bush visits the World Trade Center site. Federal officials release names of the 19 hijackers. Bush declares a "national day of prayer and remembrance." Many Americans attend religious services. Congress unanimously approves $40 billion for emergency aid, including $20 billion for New York. President Bush activates 50,000 national guard and reserve members to help with recovery and security.

After Katrina he failed to visit New Orleans until the anniversary of 9/11. Weeks after the hurricane hit. And then it was for another photo op like 9/11.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) Sunday, September 11, 2005;

-- President Bush arrived in Louisiana Sunday as the official death toll from Hurricane Katrina climbed past 400 and the search for bodies continued nearly two weeks after the storm hit the Gulf Coast.

The visit is Bush's third to the region but his first chance to get a first-hand look at the streets of New Orleans, which were flooded after levees protecting the low-lying city broke.

Two days after the storm hit, Bush surveyed Katrina's destruction from Air Force One on his way back to Washington from Crawford, Texas, where he'd spent a month's vacation. He visited other parts of the region in two subsequent visits.

He was on vacation prior to Katrina as he was prior to 9/11.

“News coverage has pointedly stressed that W.'s month-long stay at his ranch in Crawford is the longest presidential vacation in 32 years. Washington Post supercomputers calculated that if you add up all his weekends at Camp David, layovers at Kennebunkport and assorted to-ing and fro-ing, W. will have spent 42 percent of his presidency ‘at vacation spots or en route.’” Charles Krauthammer, “A Vacation Bush Deserves,” The Washington Post, August 10, 2001.

Yesterday he commemorated his regimes failure to support the people of New Orleans then and now. And as usual there was no mea culpa.

President Bush and other officials observed the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, honoring the dead and touring still ruined neighborhoods.

However the real scandal is not that he arrived late after Hurricane Katrina, but that after two years the City has not been rebuilt, funds have been squandered.

A recent report from the RFK Center for Human Rights and the Institute for Southern Studies estimated that the Bush administration was overstating federal funding for the Gulf Coast rebuilding campaign by as much as 300%, with about $35 billion of an estimated $114 billion actually spent.

With America's largest black city and thousands of blacks stranded in the immediate aftermath of the storm the failure to rescue them smacked of racism.

That the federal government has utterly failed in these lethal days is universally obvious.

Is it because so many of these people are black and poor? Is it because Bush has successfully stolen a second term and just doesn't care? Is it because this gouged and battered organization that was once our government has been so thoroughly exhausted by war and corruption that it cannot or will not manage so basic a task as bringing the necessities of life to its needlessly dying citizens?

But to hear of dead bodies being stacked outside a professional football stadium to avoid further stench where ten thousand Americans can't get water, food or sanitary facilities.To see dazed elders who've just lost their homes or hospital rooms being laid on sidewalks to die. To watch crying children stretched out on the ground, separated from their parents, dehydrated, overheated, starving....this is too much to bear.

How utterly can our nation have failed? How totally bankrupt can we be?

And the guy in charge of all this who should have been fired; Homeland Security boss Chertoff, wasn't.

Congressional investigators lambasted the U.S. government for its response to Hurricane Katrina, saying a lack of a clear chain of command hindered relief efforts and that Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff or another top official should have been the point person on relief efforts.

The Government Accountability Office also found that the government still lacks sufficient plans and training programs to prepare for catastrophic disasters like the Aug. 29 storm that devastated much of the Gulf Coast area. But it also singled out Chertoff in several shortcomings.

Until now, Chertoff has largely escaped widespread criticism of the government's sluggish response to Katrina. By contrast, then-FEMA Director Michael Brown, the principal federal official at the disaster site, quit his job after becoming the public face of the failures.

The report said that neither Chertoff nor any of his deputies in the disaster area acted as President George W. Bush's overall storm coordinator, "which serves to underscore the immaturity of and weaknesses relating to the current national response framework."

After all Katrina was not a surprise to the administration since they had anticipated it.

Before 9/11 the Federal Emergency Management Agency listed the three most likely catastrophic disasters facing America: a terrorist attack on New York, a major earthquake in San Francisco and a hurricane strike on New Orleans. "The New Orleans hurricane scenario," The Houston Chronicle wrote in December 2001, "may be the deadliest of all."

Some critics are suggesting President Bush was as least partly responsible for the flooding in New Orleans. In a widely quoted opinion piece, former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal says that "the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature," and cites years of reduced funding for federal flood-control projects around New Orleans.

Our fact-checking confirms that Bush indeed cut funding for projects specifically designed to strengthen levees. Indeed, local officials had been complaining about that for years.

And with a lame duck President and an administration running on the spot nothing has changed. The failures that led to the destruction of New Orleans plague the White House still.

When investigating the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, a House of Representatives select committee cited a “failure of initiative” at all levels of government. The storm killed 1,836 people, caused an estimated $81 billion in damage, and displaced some two million people. The population of New Orleans is currently about 66 percent of its pre-Katrina level, and the city’s uneven recovery is examined in depth in this New York Times interactive feature. The Department of Homeland Security has since quadrupled its stockpiles of emergency supplies and sought to improve emergency planning at the community level. The 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act signed by President Bush in August promises to provide increased funding for emergency communications and first responders. Yet some experts believe the lessons of the disaster appear to have gone unlearned. In his recent book, The Edge of Disaster, CFR’s Stephen Flynn says the levees that failed to protect New Orleans two years ago are being rebuilt to the same standard as before, capable only of enduring a Category 3 hurricane.

Now compare Bush's slow response to President Johnson's visit to hurricane ravaged New Orleans after Hurricane Betsy. And a visit to the same lower ninth ward that Bush visited yesterday.

Lyndon Johnson received high marks for visiting the Lower Ninth Ward and victims in shelters a day after Hurricane Betsy ravaged New Orleans. ("I put aside all the problems on my desk to come to Louisiana as soon as I could," Johnson said.)

President Lyndon Baines Johnson flew into New Orleans the day after Hurricane Betsy in September 1965 and announced at the airport, "I am here because I want to see with my own eyes what the unhappy alliance of wind and water have done to this land and people."

The day after. Not a week later.

LBJ believed in the 'Great Society'. Bush believes in 'compassionate conservatism'. The latter is an ideological reaction to the former. And it has proven to be more of a failure than the Great Society ever was.


SEE:

Our Living Earth

Surge Blackout

What He Didn't Say

Soul of a City

Remember Katrina and Rita?

Katrina Mission Accomplished

Katrina: It's a Dog-Gone Crime

This is What Global Warming Looks Like

A Paradox called Katrina

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Surge Blackout

With bad news like this;

An Iraqi power plant rebuilt with tens of millions of U.S. dollars fell into disrepair once transferred to the Baghdad government, according to the U.S. office that tracks reconstruction spending.

The Iraqis' failure to maintain the 320-megawatt Dora plant, considered an important source of power for electricity-starved Baghdad, is just one of the issues hindering attempts to rebuild the country, the latest audit report to Congress concludes.

The U.S. Government has decided to do this; US drops Baghdad electricity reports

While the Iraqi government points fingers elsewhere.Iraq Electricity Ministry blames provinces

This proves George Bush was right the U.S. is not capable of nation building. Or even maintaining infrastructure in Iraq or at home.

The Bush administration has shown little progress - and in some cases backtracked - on its pledge to do a better job in awarding contracts to small, Gulf Coast businesses for Hurricane Katrina work, a congressional analysis shows.

The review of federal contracts from five government agencies, conducted by the House Small Business Committee, is the latest to document missteps in the award of billions of dollars of lucrative government work since the 2005 storm.

See:

What He Didn't Say

Iraq; The War For Oil

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