Author: NewMexiKen

The hack’s hack

So, just to recap, [FEMA Director Michael] Brown had no experience whatsoever in emergency management. He was fired from his last job for incompetence. He was hired because he was the new director’s college roommate. And after the director — who himself got the job because he was a political fixer for the president — left, he became top dog. And President Bush said yesterday that he thinks Brown is “doing a helluva job”.

Talking Points Memo

It’s all how you look at it

Walking across a bridge, I saw a man on the edge, about to jump. I ran over and said: “Stop. Don’t do it.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Well, there’s so much to live for!”

“Like what?”

“Are you religious?”

He said: “Yes.”

I said: “Me too. Are you Christian or Buddhist?”

“Christian.”

“Me, too. Are you Catholic or Protestant?”

“Protestant.”

“Me, too. Are you Episcopalian or Baptist?”

“Baptist.”

“Me, too. Are you Baptist Church of God or Church of the Lord?”

“Baptist Church of God.”

“Me, too. Are you original Baptist Church of God, or Reformed Baptist Church of God?”

“Reformed Baptist Church of God.”

“Me, too! Are you Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1879, or Reformed Baptist Church of God, Reformation of 1915?”

He said: “Reformation of 1915.”

I said: “Die, heretic scum,” and pushed him off.

Our elected representatives and their priorities

Ron Fournier of The Associated Press reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane and flood programs in New Orleans last year. The White House carved it to about $40 million. But President Bush and Congress agreed to a $286.4 billion pork-filled highway bill with 6,000 pet projects, including a $231 million bridge for a small, uninhabited Alaskan island.

Maureen Dowd in The New York Times

Just imagine — what if this site were TexiKen?

From independence (1836) through annexation by the United States (1845), Texas claimed the Rio Grande as its southern and western boundary. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 confirmed the Rio Grande as the border between Mexico and the United States from the Gulf of Mexico to the 32nd parallel (just above El Paso). Texas insisted its boundary continued further along the river however, to its source in Colorado and from there north to the 42nd parallel. That is, Texas claimed 2/3rds of New Mexico including Santa Fe, much of Colorado, part of Wyoming, southwestern Kansas and the Oklahoma panhandle. See map.

As part of the Compromise of 1850 the boundaries of Texas were established as we know them (poor surveying and meandering rivers notwithstanding). In return, Texas received $10 million in compensation applied toward its debt (worth about $200 million today). The bill also established the territories of New Mexico (which included present-day Arizona) and Utah (which included present-day Nevada and western Colorado).

Santa Fe, Texas — just doesn’t have the same cachet, does it?

[First posted September 3, 2003]

Outrage at Response

From a report in The New York Times:

There was shock at the slow response: Joseph P. Riley Jr., the 29-year Democratic mayor of Charleston, S.C., and a veteran of Hurricane Hugo’s wrath, said: “I knew in Charleston, looking at the Weather Channel, that Gulfport was going to be destroyed. I’m the mayor of Charleston, but I knew that!”

But perhaps most of all there was shame, a deep collective national disbelief that the world’s sole remaining superpower could not – or at least had not – responded faster and more forcefully to a disaster that had been among its own government’s worst-case possibilities for years.

“It really makes us look very much like Bangladesh or Baghdad,” said David Herbert Donald, the retired Harvard historian of the Civil War and a native Mississippian, who said that Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s destructive march from Atlanta to the sea paled by comparison. “I’m 84 years old. I’ve been around a long time, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Here kitty, kitty

From the Los Angeles Times, A Southwestern legend returns:

“WHAT DO I DO about a leopard in my yard?”

My mom is on the phone, and I’m not sure how to answer. She lives in the Catalina Mountain foothills north of Tucson where mountain lions can occasionally cause a stir. But a leopard?

She tells me that it all began with the barking of her Maltese dog, and when she looked out the window, she saw a large cat moving along the inside wall of her courtyard. The cat, which measured nearly 5 feet long — with a tail of comparable length — leapt over the wall and disappeared. I told her to call Arizona Game and Fish.

Tim Snow, a specialist with the department, arrived at her home a few minutes before I did, and although we searched, we couldn’t locate any tracks in the dry ground. Tim told me that he gets a few reports like this every year from the Catalina foothills. What my mom had seen in her yard, identified from a lineup of various photographs, was a jaguar, the dappled cat, the world’s third largest and the only one in the New World that roars.

Delta Is at Risk, Geologist Warns

From Thursday’s Los Angeles Times:

When UC Davis geology professor Jeffrey Mount looks at the images of broken levees and surging floodwaters in New Orleans, he sees the future of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

“There is a natural tendency of Californians to look at what is going on in the Gulf Coast as as foreign to us as the tsunami in Indonesia — ‘That’s not something that could ever happen to us.’ — Oh, they couldn’t be more wrong,” Mount said Wednesday.

In a study published in a Bay Area scientific journal last March, Mount and another scientist concluded that over the next 50 years, there is a 2-in-3 chance that a major storm or earthquake will cause widespread levee failure in the Northern California delta, part of the West Coast’s largest estuary and the source of drinking water for more than 22 million Californians. Such a catastrophe would flood reclaimed marshlands that are sprouting housing developments and send seawater rushing into the delta, forcing a shutdown of the enormous pumps that send water south to Central Valley agriculture and Southern California cities.

A Can’t-Do Government

Paul Krugman begins his Friday column:

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.” It described a potential catastrophe very much like the one now happening.

So why were New Orleans and the nation so unprepared?

Beats Per Minute

Beats Per Minute blogging from New Orleans.

(Actually, he’s in Birmingham for now, but lives in New Orleans.)

He begins Thursday’s entry:

For me, yesterday was the lowest point during this whole ordeal. I had such high hopes after hearing some news on Monday afternoon, after the hurricane had passed, that our part of town might have done really well. I imagined eventually going back, having to clean up, putting things back on shelves and on the walls, letting the dogs run around in the back yard, hearing them bark, watching them jump and play. In other words, moving back into our home. Then when I woke up yesterday morning and I heard about the breach in the levee, it was as though the ground ripped opened at my feet creating a wide chasm, and I spent all day trying to balance on a narrow ledge, trying to keep from falling in.

Take me for a ride in your car, car

Phew. This trip is wonderful, but entirely too much driving.

Avenue of the Giants

NewMexiKen and Dad detoured from U.S. 101 to take the “Avenue of the Giants” through part of Humboldt Redwoods State Park. This photo does no justice to the magnificent trees, or to the spooky somewhat primeval feeling one had driving through a forest nearly dark from lack of sunlight reaching the ground. I kept thinking, “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”

San Francisco

“The City” as seen early Tuesday afternoon from Sausalito, just before we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge (toll now $5). I think you can see the tilt of the earth in this photo, though possibly I was just holding the camera badly.

Fort Bowie National Historic Site

… was authorized on this date in 1964. According to the National Park Service:

FortBowie.jpg

Fort Bowie commemorates in its 1000 acres, the story of the bitter conflict between the Chiricahua Apaches and the United States military. For more than 30 years Fort Bowie and Apache Pass were the focal point of military operations eventually culminating in the surrender of Geronimo in 1886 and the banishment of the Chiricahuas to Florida and Alabama. It was the site of the Bascom Affair, a wagon train massacre, and the battle of Apache Pass, where a large force of Chiricahua Apaches under Mangus Colorados and Cochise fought the California Volunteers. The remains of Fort Bowie today are carefully preserved, the adobe walls of various post buildings and the ruins of a Butterfield Stage Station.

Visiting Fort Bowie requires a three mile round trip hike — unless you use the handicap entrance, which they keep a secret until you show up after walking a mile-and-a-half on a July afternoon with a daughter eight months pregnant and a two-year-old grandson.

Sneaky snake

According to The Writer’s Almanac:

It was on this day in 30 BC that Queen Cleopatra of Egypt killed herself with a snake she had smuggled into her chamber where she was held captive by Octavian, formerly the political rival of her lover Mark Antony. Octavian had defeated Cleopatra and Antony at the Battle of Actium and had taken Cleopatra prisoner. When Cleopatra learned that Octavian planned to parade her as part of his triumphant return to Rome, she planned her own suicide. For centuries, it was assumed that the snake she used was an asp, but it is now thought that the snake was an Egyptian cobra.

Teddy Ballgame

Ted Williams is 87 today. He’s planning to spend the day hanging out and just chillin’.

Not counting games when he only pinch hit (i.e., only one at bat), there were just eight instances in Williams’s career that he went consecutive games without getting on base — seven times he failed to get on for two games, once it was for three.

It’s also the birthday

… of Warren Buffet. The billionaire “uncle” of Jimmy Buffet is 75. (Actually distant cousins.)

… of Jerry Tarkanian. The Shark is also 75.

… of John Phillips. The Papa is 70. (The other Papa was Denny Doherty.)

… of Molly Ivins. The columnist is 61.

… of Peggy Lipton. The Mod Squad member is 58.

… of Lewis Black. The comedian, and regular on The Daily Show, is 57.

… of Cameron Diaz. Princess Fiona is 33.

Down the coast

NewMexiKen and Dad, official dad of NewMexiKen, continued their mad rush to the Pacific Northwest and back Monday, beginning the return trip with the drive down the Oregon coast — all of it. A dreary, rainy morning (appreciated by us two desert rats) gave way to sunny, nearly cloudless skies, though the temperature rarely rose above 70ºF.

Yaquina Head Light

This is the Yaquina Head Light House located at the Yaquina Head Outstanding Natural Area near Newport, Oregon. Unfortunately today the surf was rough and the gray whales that spend the summer off the Oregon coast were nowhere in sight. (“You go on up to Alaska for the summer if you want. I see no reason to do all that unnecessary swimming. I’m going to just stay right here off Oregon. See you on the way back to Baja this winter.”)

Got to love a place that bills itself as the “Outstanding” Natural Area.

Dad and Surf

Dad takes in the surf further south along the coast.

The view from Debby’s porch

Astoria panorama

Debby, official younger sister of NewMexiKen, lives in Astoria, Oregon, the oldest American settlement west of the Rockies. Her porch sits about 60 feet above the Columbia River, at sea level here as it nears its outlet into the Pacific. Sunday was cool and rainy with low skies. This was the view looking northwest around 7:20 PM. That’s Washington State across the river.