The latest episode of South Park nails the amusing euphoria of Obama supporters, and the apocalyptic woe of some McCain supporters. (Some of us already went through the stages of grief long ago.)

Meanwhile, everything is proceeding according to plan:

1) Democrats misinterpreting their mandate:

"This is a tectonic-plate election, one of those once-in-a-generation times where people not only define change, but define a new relationship with government," said New York Sen. Charles Schumer, the lead campaign strategist for Senate Democrats. He added that voters want a government that is "more activist, more involved" in the economy and their lives.

How many times have you heard this in the last two decades? This year, voters thought "change" meant a dramatic end to business as usual in Washington. Liberals think it means America has given the least popular Congress in history a blank check to implement the long-rejected progressive agenda. Schumer may as well be playing with matches in a fireworks factory.

2) Obama supporters already feeling let down:

"I want my money today! It's my money. I want it right now!" yelled one former campaign worker.

The large gathering of around 375 people prompted police to call in extra officers and set up temporary barricades....Eventually people did start getting paid, but some said they were missing hours and told to fill in paperwork making their claim and that eventually they would get a check in the mail.

"Still that's not right. I'm disappointed. I'm glad for the president, but I'm disappointed in this system," said Diane Jefferson.

Eerie, isn't it? Like looking into the future.

"Every generation," says Brian J. Noggle, "must live through its own 1970s."

Update: Iowahawk:

Although I have not always been the most outspoken advocate of President-Elect Barack Obama, today I would like to congratulate him and add my voice to the millions of fellow citizens who are celebrating his historic and frightening election victory.... It reminds us of how far we've come, and it's something everyone in our nation should celebrate in whatever little time we now have left.

Read the whole thing.

A Brief Summary of the Election

--- We're safe from a Senate Democratic supermajority. Upside: Nancy Pelosi's worst high crackpottery may be largely neutralized. Downside: Nancy Pelosi's worst high crackpottery may go largely unnoticed.

--- Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina? Thanks, Bob Barr! Of course, McCain had this coming. Somewhere between the amnesty and the bailout, enough conservatives realized that even if they had dinner on the table before he got home, McCain was never going to stop beating them. If only McCain had had a stronger showing, Barr could've cost him even more states.

--- On schedule, it's a manufactured international crisis! Wait, is it this one?

--- Newark, New Jersey's Democratic Mayor, Cory Booker, on MSNBC last night:

"I want to luxuriate in the racial deliciousness of our country!"

Bonus points when he's asked about the "problems" facing Newark, and is overcome with visible terror for a good thirty seconds. Apparently, there weren't supposed to be any questions about Newark.

--- Young voters remain incredibly unreliable and disinterested. The "historic" turnout? 1% higher than in 2004..

--- After surprising opposition from leaders like former Governor Jim Edgar, the Illinois Constitutional Convention referendum failed by a large margin. Northern Illinois University political science major Alex Hari explains:

"Every state has their own constitution. Voters in this election decided if they wanted changes to be made to the state constitution."

Thank you, John Madden. Thoughts on the challenges faced by the "yes" movement from "yes" movement leader Bruno Behrend.

--- If Philadelphia Republicans managed to dodge the Black Panthers "guarding" their polling places, they probably could've followed this gentleman's advice and voted "a couple times". CNN reporter's startled response: "I think that's against the law, but it's OK."

--- There's no denying the importance of Obama's historic moment last night and I have no intention of diminishing it, but while I'm no fashion guru, even I think that Michelle Obama has purchased the dress of the apocalypse.

--- "We're also smelling just a little bit of weed in the air. Haven't been to many political events where you smell that."

--- Rock the Vote, the New York Times, and the respective New York State and New York City Boards of Elections have joined forces to point fingers at each other in the bungling of tens of thousands of voter registrations. On their Blog, Rock the Vote promises to find the real killers.

--- Al Franken appears to have failed in his bid for the Senate, which is good news, because physicists have long suspected that Franken's presence in the Senate Chamber would rip the fabric of spacetime. Predictably, his campaign ended with him saying embarrassing things that remind everyone why he deserved to lose.

--- Actually, about Obama's speech last night:

Our campaign was not hatched in the halls of Washington - it began in the backyards of Des Moines and the living rooms of Concord and the front porches of Charleston.

...and in the living room of William Ayers.

Hah!

The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America - I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.

I'm still waiting for this guy to tell me where we're going.

I promise you - we as a people will get there.

No, seriously. Where are we going?

Over the last six months, professional obligations have caused me to miss a lot of opportunities to participate in the blogosphere, which has been depressing. I originally imagined I'd have the willpower to continue blogging at a normal pace, but being surrounded by this election cycle all day, every day, pretty much beat that out of me.

However, from the Democrats' embarrassing mistake in opposing offshore drilling to the comical spectacle that they billed as their convention, I missed out on opportunities to say some things that probably needed to be said. Still, I think what I've been working on will prove significant, and I'm looking forward to tomorrow night, to the extent that I might have my work vindicated. Even if we don't get what we wanted, we've done damage in places it needed to be done.

As for the Presidential race, I'll say the same things here that I've told others:

Barack Obama isn't going to win by the dramatic 10 and 12 percent margins some polls are suggesting, it's going to be more like 5. Still, we're losing this election. John McCain made huge mistakes, let down his base, and Obama had money, a willingness to shift to the right in his rhetoric, and an anti-incumbent, anti-Bush current running in his favor. McCain's powerful strategic choice in Sarah Palin turned out to be an epic tactical error, and his handling of the bailout was a disastrous miscue that all but ended the race for him.

The bailout package was, indeed, "bipartisan", but only in the sense that both parties were working together against us. It left me disgusted enough that I'm opposing anyone who voted for it, for any office, forever. With the Early Voting collapse of the "Write in Fred Thompson" suicide pact I'd made with friends, that leaves me forced to join them in voting for Bob Barr.

However, if McCain has failed conservatives, Obama is already preparing to fail America:

Barack Obama's senior advisers have drawn up plans to lower expectations for his presidency if he wins next week's election, amid concerns that many of his euphoric supporters are harbouring unrealistic hopes of what he can achieve.

One senior adviser told The Times that the first few weeks of the transition, immediately after the election, were critical, "so there's not a vast mood swing from exhilaration and euphoria to despair".

Interesting. Who's fault would those ridiculous expectations be?

Maybe I'm being needlessly harsh, but it seems as if "hope" is a fallback for people who have trouble with economics. Consider this poor woman, who thinks that, somehow, under Obama, she "won't have to worry about putting gas in her car, won't have to worry about paying her mortgage".

What?

Democrats accuse Republicans of using "the politics of fear", while warning from the other side of their mouth that if they aren't elected to office, our children will never have a future and might even be killed in a natural disaster caused by carbon emissions. Feminist Erica Jong warns that "blood will run in the streets", and, in a dramatic overestimation of the commitment and small arms proficiency of Obama supporters, that an Obama loss will spark a "second American civil war".

We're told, live on major news networks, most dramatically by apparent rabies sufferer Keith Olbermann, that we're the ones somehow suppressing dissenting viewpoints, even as Barack Obama bans disapproving newspapers from his plane and blacklists stations that ask his running mate pressing questions, even as a left-liberal radio host wishes death on Joe the Plumber for defying "Him" and liberal Democrats try to reimpose the so-called "fairness doctrine" on conservative commentary.

Truly, as Mark Steyn has noted, satire is dead.

Still, no matter what you hear on your favorite cable news network, this is not the most important or contentious election in American history and the nation is certainly not "more divided than ever". It's another Presidential election between two perfectly fallible human beings who are ignorant of many things, and we do have these elections like clockwork. We will do it again in four years, and the media will doubtlessly describe that, too, as the most important election in our history, as if our very lives hinge on the outcome.

A certain percentage of voters believe that the sheer power of their faith in Obama will somehow grant him the power and the wisdom to solve all their problems, a fallacy that would quickly be dispelled by a good civics course. In truth, real reform and good governance requires constant vigilance from an informed electorate that realizes the Presidency is only one piece of the puzzle, not faith in "change" or "experience" or any other buzzword a campaign pays to place on television. If government is full of hypocrites or sell-outs, it's primarily because we don't pay enough attention to stop electing them.

Jeffrey Kuhner, writing for the Washington Times, fears the end of days for individual liberty and free markets.

New Deal-Great Society liberalism has put America on the path to creeping socialism. The Democrats are now on the verge of completing it. A socialist America will be a poorer, weaker America. More importantly, it will spell the end of American exceptionalism - the experiment of a free people in constitutional self-government.

Once that happens, there will be no turning back. There will be a conservative movement after an Obama victory. However, it will be one fighting a desperate, rear-guard action. Like the conservatives in Canada or Western Europe, the question will no longer be how to stop the statist juggernaut but how to manage it.

I don't believe that's likely to happen. Whether his promises are sincere or he's a closeted radical Marxist, there are going to be very practical limits to Barack Obama's political capital, because his party wants "change" that looks nothing like what voters are signing up for. He's going to be helpless to find a happy compromise, as there's clearly no mandate for socialist reforms: 84% of Americans prioritize economic growth over an "equitable" distribution of wealth. Democrats weren't elected to "give their ideas a chance", they were elected in the hopes that they might give the public's ideas a chance for once: right now, half of all Americans believe that this Congress, a Democrat-controlled Congress, is no better than a random sample from the phone book, and three quarters believe that their elected legislators don't even understand the bills they're passing.

To predict that the Democrats will massively overplay their hand in this environment is to predict that the sun will rise tomorrow, that the next Pope will be a practicing Roman Catholic. They will confuse this for a mandate, and then they'll burn for it. The next few years are, ultimately, going to be about getting the GOP back on track.

He's Honored To Get What We All Want To See

He's kind of like Jesus, but not in a sacriligious way.

"All of those things happened because we had to push and prod and fight through the system to get it done for people, and if I get bloodied up in the process, and there are some times when people are just not generally approving, I feel honored to get my ass kicked for the people," Blagojevich said.

Well, in that case... Monday Night Rehabilitation!

Really, isn't that what he's implying here? That voters are just too stupid to understand how precious his genius is?

For the current election, Blagojevich has come out against a referendum calling for a new state constitutional convention.

Of course he has.

He said it might limit his power to get around the state General Assembly to get things done.

In fact, it's almost guaranteed to do exactly that. The more Blagojevich promotes that fact, the more likely it is to pass.

Incredibly, the Constitutional Convention referendum process is already being bungled by Blagojevich's co-incompetents:

An Illinois appellate court affirmed the trial court's remedy for the "downright misleading" and unconstitutional ballot: hand out a flyer to voters telling them to disregard the referendum "Explanation" and "Notice" that are printed right on the ballot.

The bottom line is that citizens will vote on a ballot that a court has ruled is unconstitutional.

Irony.

He's a Victim of the System

The video surveillance system.

The head of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library was fired Tuesday, just days after it came to light that he had twice been arrested for shoplifting.

Director Rick Beard was placed on administrative leave last week after The (Springfield) State Journal-Register reported his arrests for stealing DVDs and neckties, but he continued to receive his salary.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich formally fired him on Tuesday. Beard was notified by telephone, said Dave Blanchette, spokesman for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency.

Beard made nearly $250,000 a year as director of the museum and the foundation.

He was charged in August with trying to steal $40 worth of DVDs from a Springfield Target.

And he was charged with misdemeanor theft last year after being caught allegedly trying to steal $300 worth of neckties at a Springfield shopping mall.

The DVDs? Season 4 of "House".

This is how it starts, petty theft, tire slashing, vote fraud. Then, you get bold, and rob your own armored cars.

Soon, the transformation will be complete, and Beard will be eligible to run for high office in Illinois.

Munchausen's Syndrome Strikes Again

You know Ashley Todd, the McCain campaign volunteer who pulled the idiotic stunt where she pretended to have been assaulted by an Obama supporter?

Turns out, her antics had previously gotten her thrown out of a group of Ron Paul supporters.

I didn't realize it was even possible to get thrown out of a Ron Paul group. I assumed they all wore capes and masks to protect their identities.

This Must Have Been Done by Nazis, Soviets, Pol Pot

Illinois' "other" Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, in a remarkable moment of clarity:

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin wishes he could blame Republicans for the mess and dysfunction paralyzing Illinois state government these days, but he knows he can't.

"This mess is our creation, Democratic creation, and there are no excuses for what has happened," Durbin, a Springfield resident and the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said in an interview Thursday with The State Journal-Register editorial board.

Durbin said he's tried to work more closely with Blagojevich on key issues, but doesn't get his phone calls returned regularly. He said he doesn't know what it will take to fix the problems or whether he or anyone else in Washington could help cut through the morass.

Don't worry: once we elect a product of the Chicago Democratic machine, shining beacon of good governance that it is, to the Presidency, everything will be puppies and unicorns in no time.

He Loves You Even More Now That You Hate Him

Point:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich may be the least liked politician in America. A new poll shows only 10 percent want him re-elected in 2010. Add that to the 13 percent who approve of Blagojevich's job performance -- that's even worse than President Bush's 18 percent approval ratings. The Chicago Tribune poll surveyed 500 likely voters last week.

The governor has become such a polarizing figure that both Republicans and Democrats are using him in negative ads. State Sen. Debbie Halvorson, a Democratic candidate for Congress in the 11th district, is now using the contributions of businessman Marty Ozinga, her opponent, to Blagojevich as a reason to vote for her.

Counter-Point:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich today blamed his low approval rating on the faltering economy and said he thinks voters would give him a third term in office if he was running on the Nov. 4.

What did he blame it on after Hurricane Katrina, when he somehow managed to rank worse than Governor Blanco?

He said he was confident that if he was on the ballot today that he'd "win by 10 points or better."

That's technically correct. If he was on the ballot today, he'd be unopposed.

"I love the people of Illinois more today than I did before," Blagojevich said. "And if it's a case of unrequited love at this point, I'll just have to work extra hard to get them to love me again."

In some jurisdictions, that'd be enough to get a restraining order. However, it looks like the feds would prefer to skip straight to prison.

HELLO WORLD

That's right, the blog is back online. I have, literally, not had time to repair a MySQL table until now.

Life gets better November 4th. Or, depending on how "big picture" I want to be about it, much, much worse.

Bicycle Wars

A debate is inspired among multiple factions of Chattanoogan readers following an epic letter describing bicyclists as "screaming and crying" "morons" in "little clown suits".

I get over to Signal Mountain Road and Dayton Boulevard and another little clown with little blinking lights runs this red light while all us motorized vehicle drivers obey the law. And I'd have given a hundred dollars to have been over at the tunnel the other day and saw the little clown scream at the car that passed him, and when the car stopped a police officer got out and read him the riot act. I'd bet the little clown had to walk over into the woods and shake his little clown suit out....

These clowns need to learn that $3,000 or $4,000 aluminum Barnum and Bailey bicycle are 'no' match for an automobile. Stay off the roads. No one wants to drive home at two or three miles an hour and watch you sweat and turn red in the face.

Go to a gym and get in shape. And when you can keep up in traffic, ride your B&B kiddie bike on the road, morons.

Over a dozen emotionally-charged responses follow, including one from the most unfortunately-named man in the American South, Savage Glascock.

Let's just be safe and assume the money was stolen.

Often, recordkeeping anomalies are a sign of fraud.

In a lawsuit filed by a lawyer and two business-group representatives, Blagojevich lawyers admitted they had virtually no record of [the FamilyCare health insurance] program.

They said the administration can't identify participants or contact them, monitor premium payments or refund them, and don't even know how much they've collected in premium payments or where the money is. That, along with the Legislature's rejection of the program, raised ''severe concerns,'' Judge Fitzgerald Smith wrote in issuing the court's opinion.

The Democratic governor asked the Legislature last year to expand state-subsidized health care by raising income limits, adding 147,000 people at a cost of about $40 million. The Legislature refused, as did a legislative rules-making body and Secretary of State Jesse White.

But Blagojevich began enrolling newcomers. The administration continued even after Circuit Judge James Epstein issued his April injunction. It took another court order to get Blagojevich to stop.

Greg Baise, president of the Illinois Manufacturers Association and a plaintiff, called the lack of records ''appalling'' and said it's likely plaintiffs will ask the judge to appoint an outside monitor to ''unwind'' the program because Blagojevich can't be trusted.

Rod Blagojevich can't be trusted to pick up lunch.

Great Success

At last, the day I've been living for.

Could Illinois Governor Blagojevich suffer the same fate as convicted former Governor George Ryan?

Could he? Could he?

Sources tell CBS 2 News Chicago that Federal agents claim to have enough evidence to indict Blagojevich on fraud and conspiracy charges.

I hope they don't plan on letting him finish his term. He deserves to go out in flames, not like a decent public servant.

Moonbat Shot Down

Apparently, NBC has finally noticed that frothing lunatic Keith Olbermann is not a professional journalist.

MSNBC is replacing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews as co-anchors of political night coverage with David Gregory, and will use the two newsmen as commentators.

Throughout the primaries and summer, MSNBC argued that Olbermann and Matthews could serve as dispassionate anchors on political news nights and that viewers would accept them in that role, but things fell apart during the conventions.

The tipping point appears to have come during the GOP convention when Olbermann criticized MSNBC for showing a Sept. 11-themed video prepared by the Republicans.

Personally, I think the tipping point came during the Democratic convention, when Olbermann angrily proclaimed, as part of his theoretically neutral coverage, that an Associated Press reporter should "look for a new job" after daring to criticize The Obama's speech. Even for Olbermann, who usually plays fast and loose with reality and fills America's living rooms with unhinged rants, that was over the line.

During her acceptance speech last week, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin talked about the "Washington elite" not accepting her qualifications for the job. Some delegates on the convention floor began chanting, "N-B-C, N-B-C."

Olbermann began to have difficulty keeping his opinions in check, or simply stopped trying.

He sarcastically dismissed GOP pundit Pat Buchanan on the air after Buchanan said the Republicans had been enlivened by the entrance of a conservative Republican.

"Those reading US Weekly with the picture of her and her youngest daughter with the word 'scandal' written across it won't be so happy," Olbermann said.

He expressed little sympathy at another point when GOP anger at rumors over the Internet about Palin were being discussed.

"We'll see if people feel sorry for unfounded rumors on the Internet," he said. "If that's the case, Senator Obama's probably standing up and cheering and waiting for people to feel sorry for him."

Perhaps most embarrassing, Joe Scarborough was discussing positive developments in John McCain's campaign at one point when Olbermann was heard on an offstage microphone saying: "Jesus, Joe, why don't you get a shovel?"

How MSNBC thought this was going to work is beyond me. Having Olbermann anchoring serious political coverage eliminates any appearance of impartiality that they might want to have. There's no escaping his persona, which is, to put it mildly, not generally associated with factual accuracy or intellectual honesty. It's like asking Bill O'Reilly to anchor the coverage. You can't do it without fostering a general sense that something untoward is going on. In Olbermann's case, it clearly was.

All the drama made MSNBC a punch line when top NBC anchor Brian Williams appeared on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" last week. "Is there no control?" host Jon Stewart asked him. "'Is it 'Lord of the Flies?'"

A sheepish Williams said that every family has a dynamic of its own.

"But does MSNBC have to be the Lohans?" Stewart said.

When Jon Stewart, whose show, in his own words, is on after "muppets making crank phone calls", says your news organization is acting like a bunch of petulant, bloodthirsty children, you may have a legitimate problem. His perfectly valid analysis of the problems with Crossfire preceded the surprising death of the show by only a couple months.

Mr. Klein specifically cited the criticism that the comedian Jon Stewart leveled at "Crossfire" when he was a guest on the program during the presidential campaign. Mr. Stewart said that ranting partisan political shows on cable were "hurting America." Mr. Klein said last night, "I agree wholeheartedly with Jon Stewart's overall premise." He said he believed that especially after the terror attacks on 9/11, viewers are interested in information, not opinion.

...and yet, CNN, like the rest of the MSM, still fails to deliver, and their public trust continues to collapse, just like the rest of the MSM.

Palin FTW

Three weeks ago, I was sitting at a bar talking to a couple of friends about why Sarah Palin was a great, outside-the-box choice for McCain's running mate, but acknowledging that it would never happen. Imagine my surprise to find myself, a few days ago, explaining to another group of friends why Sarah Palin had been the best choice, from a strictly strategic point of view, that McCain could've possibly made. At this point, I'm pretty sure it's all been said all over the blogosphere already, but I'll lay it out anyway.

Put aside your partisan feelings for a second. Put aside that she's a moral authority on the most heated issue of this election cycle (oil production), put aside the question of whether women will come out in droves to vote for her (if just one in one hundred do, that's still a huge score; and many studies show women as more pro-life than men).

Instead, consider this:

1) The effective lines of attack available to the Democrats require them to burn down their own house in order to get to Palin. Accusing her of being too inexperienced to be Vice-President reminds the world that Barack Obama, someone who is, at the most generous, equally inexperienced, wants to be President. Mocking her for hunting and her teenage daughter for having a teenage boyfriend who, as rural teenage boys do, describes himself as a "redneck" only reminds the hundred million plus Americans who don't really see anything wrong with that they have nothing in common with national Democrats. One brilliant criticism even suggests that with a pregnant daughter and a child suffering from Down's Syndrome, Palin is too "distracted" to be Vice-President. To make that argument, you have to trash decades of feminist support for the idea that women can choose to blend a home life with a high-profile careers (which is already generating feminist backlash), assume that the wife is automatically the primary childcare provider, and quietly accuse single mothers and the disabled, both theoretically Democratic demographics, of being harmful burdens on their loved ones.

2) The Democrats, having anointed themselves the party of women, cannot allow the first woman in the White House to be a conservative, pro-life Republican. They must do anything and everything they can to stop it. Failure to do so would upset the decades-old balance that the Democrats depend on to remain a viable party.

Democrats should be trying to play this cool, but they can't control themselves. They have a rabid fear of Palin becoming President in 2016 and forever undermining the Democratic Party's reputation as the champion of women. They're forced to go nuclear, and every insane rumor imaginable has been vomited forth in just a few short days. Thousands of canned letters to the editor and blog comments spreading this transparent, goofy nonsense are popping up everywhere. The net result is that Sarah Palin is now more popular than Barack Obama, Joe Biden, or John McCain. A majority of Americans, though slight, believe the media is conspiring against her. There's palpable desperation, becase the ideological left, lacking shared moral premises with mainstream America, can't understand why their attacks aren't just failing, but are blowing up in their face.

That's to be expected, because these are the same people who thought that accusing John McCain of being wealthy was an effective attack, unaware that Americans, as a rule, like seeing people get rich, and don't begrudge it to war heroes.

McCain held this for the ideal moment, waiting for Obama to pick a boring, formulaic running mate and to almost completely run out of steam, unable to generate significant results from either his ridiculous "European Tour" or the convention. Obama had said everything he had to say, repeatedly, and Americans were already tired of hearing it. It's then that McCain decided to do something unusual, to throw Obama's little checkerboard onto the ground and start setting up a chess set. It seems to be working.

Now, there's still room for it to all go horribly wrong, for something truly bizarre to come out of the sky about Palin, for Obama's campaign to get their head together, but at least based on what's known, I think it's now entirely McCain's race to lose.

Update: Oh, and this stupid thing?


First, we all know how that ended. Second, Jesus had a real job: he was a carpenter. Third, apparently, some leftists still don't see that trying to compare Obama to Jesus makes Obama less popular, and makes his supporters seem like dangerous lunatics.

That's More Like It

The Hurricane hasn't even hit yet, and Louisiana officials, while they're clearly doing better this time, are still in traditional disarray.

With about 2,000 Louisiana National Guardsmen stationed in New Orleans, neighboring Jefferson Parish has seen few troops sent to help police so far despite repeated requests to the state, the parish's emergency planner said.

"I'm very frustrated that we've got twice the population to protect than New Orleans," said Deano Bonano, the emergency planner.

His comments come on the heels of a National Guard announcement that 300 soldiers in the 2nd Squadron, 108th Cavalry Regiment are departing Shreveport en route to Jefferson to bolster the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office ranks.

Bonano said he was unaware of the Guard's announcement and added that he was told troops aren't expected to arrive until tonight.

"We don't know who is coming or how many are coming," he said.

In fact, the Louisiana National Guard is barely sure who's coming.

Whether all 300 soldiers en route from Shreveport will be in Jefferson Parish is unclear. A National Guard press release says all of the soldiers will be in Jefferson helping the Sheriff's Office.

Spc. Qualan Jefferson, a squadron spokesman, said elements of his unit are going to the Morial Convention Center -- in New Orleans -- and to Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner.

Bonano he was told the troops will deploy to the Alario Center near Westwego, where the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office would dispatch them out for security missions.

This time around, though, when other states offered to help, Louisiana has actually bothered to respond. National Guard elements from Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, New York, and Missouri are already on their way.

It's Almost Like They're a Real State

New Orleans, prepare for glory.

With forecasters warning that Gustav could strengthen and slam into the Gulf Coast as a major hurricane, a New Orleans still recovering from Hurricane Katrina's devastating hit drew up evacuation plans.

Taking no chances, city officials began preliminary planning to evacuate and lock down the city in hopes of avoiding the catastrophe that followed the 2005 storm. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin left the Democratic National Convention in Denver to return home for the preparations. Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency to lay the groundwork for federal assistance, and put 3,000 National Guard troops on standby.

If a Category 3 or stronger hurricane comes within 60 hours of the city, New Orleans plans to institute a mandatory evacuation order. Unlike Katrina, there will be no massive shelter at the Superdome, a plan designed to encourage residents to leave. Instead, the state has arranged for buses and trains to take people to safety.

Evacuating? What a remarkable idea! Trains and buses? It's almost like they figured out who is responsible for emergencies.

At a suburban Lowe's store, employees said portable generators, gasoline cans, bottled water and batteries were selling briskly. Hotels across south Louisiana reported taking many reservations as coastal residents looked inland for possible refuge.

Also? Rifles.

Alive

I've been in the Catskills and vicinity for two weeks as part of an ongoing (and escalating) project I've been involved with. Worse yet, while I was up there, the laptop died, and Hewlett-Packard's warranty service was unusually useless on the matter. Expect resumed posting tomorrow.

Update: OK, maybe not tomorrow. Maybe more like, uh, Thursday.

Admitting He Has a Problem is the First Step

In the course of a confession you probably saw coming a mile away (and stop asking yourself "...if he's not the father and the affair ended two years ago, why was he at the hotel?"), a root cause is revealed:

"In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic," Edwards said in trying to explain his behavior.

No! John Edwards, the Democratic Party's silky pony boy, the man who even the New York Times now calls a "Ken doll", narcissistic? Not this man!
Continue Reading

The Opening Ceremonies

I'm having a lot of laughs watching the Beijing Opening Ceremonies with a Cold War historian. Nevermind what an obvious Soviet hand-me-down the Chinese national anthem ("March of the Volunteers") is, the narrator just feeds you straight lines as he tries to dance around the gigantic elephants in the room.

"...the Mogao Caves, which are wonderfully preserved Buddhist artworks in a cave in the remote desert..."

"By 'wonderfully preserved' he means that the caves were too far away for the government to destroy during the Cultural Revolution."

(dancers using their bodies to paint a traditional Chinese artwork on a giant canvas)

"So, if they're taking us through Chinese history here, when they get to Mao, are they going to come out and set that painting on fire?"

They are putting on an impressive show, but I can hardly wait to see how they deal with it when they get to about 1940.

Update: They skipped it. They cut right from the medieval era to 1978. Dead serious.

Why would anyone do this?

Just in case you ever need it, not that you ever will, here's a website featuring selected readings from the Book of Mormon, in Klingon.

This here internet has everything.