Category Archives: Current News

This is about stuff in the mass media that generally has a short interest life span. Speculation about an election outcome a few days before the election is an example.

Progress against the bigots

Posted on by

From a KABA alert:

FEDERAL JUDGE HALTS NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES

BELLEVUE, WA – The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana this afternoon issued a temporary restraining order on behalf of the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and National Rifle Association (NRA), bringing an end to firearm seizures from citizens living in and around New Orleans.

District Judge Jay Zainey issued the restraining order against all parties named in a lawsuit filed Thursday by SAF and NRA. Defendants in the lawsuit include New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief Edwin Compass III.

“This is a great victory, not just for the NRA and SAF, but primarily for law-abiding gun owners everywhere,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb. “We are proud to have joined forces with the NRA to put an end to what has amounted to a warrantless gun grab by authorities in New Orleans and surrounding jurisdictions.

“Over the past three weeks,” he continued, “residents who had lost virtually everything in the devastation following Hurricane Katrina had also essentially been stripped of something even more precious, their civil rights, and their right of self-defense, because of these gun seizures.

“SAF and NRA had no alternative but to take action,” Gottlieb added. “If these gun confiscations had been allowed to continue without challenge, it would have set a dangerous precedent that would have encouraged authorities in other jurisdictions to believe they also could suspend the civil rights of citizens in the event of some other emergency.

“What must happen now, and quickly,” said Gottlieb, “is for authorities in the New Orleans area to explain how they will return all of those firearms to their rightful owners, and do it promptly. What this ruling affirms is that even in the face of great natural disasters, governments cannot arbitrarily deprive citizens of their rights. Thanks to some great teamwork between SAF and the NRA, this sort of thing will hopefully never happen again.”

PS Click here to make a contribution to help fund this lawsuit.

It’s just a small step.  But it’s certainly a step in the right direction.  From here we need to proceed to get one more more convictions on charges stemming for the violation of laws such as these:

18 USC 241

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or
If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

18 USC 242

Whoever, under color of any law, statute, ordinance, regulation, or custom, willfully subjects any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District to the deprivation of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or to different punishments, pains, or penalties, on account of such person being an alien, or by reason of his color, or race, than are prescribed for the punishment of citizens, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both; and if bodily injury results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include the use, attempted use, or threatened use of a dangerous weapon, explosives, or fire, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, shall be fined under this title, or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

It’s a stretch, but if someone lost their life due to these jerks confiscating their firearms then some bigots could be facing the death penalty.

See also:

SAF and the NRA to file suit
SAF needs New Orleans info
Searching for survivors
This is the way it will always happen

See also: Random Nuclear Strikes.

New Orleans is flooding again

Posted on by

I just heard on the radio there is two feet of water from hurricane Rita in parts of New Orleans as water over-topped one of the levees.

They really need to give it up.  Let it be an archaeological site for future generations.  New Orleans might recover from this battle and the next, but the war will be lost along with resources that would be better invested in a new city.

See also:

Another shot at New Orleans
Now do you believe me?
New Orleans was most vulnerable major city to hurricanes
More levee info

A new home therapy profession

Posted on by

My wife, Barbara, is a physical therapist who specializes in “home health”.  She drives all over the county to see her patients.  She works with others who do speech therapists, occupational therapy, and nursing.  Many of the patients are on Medicaid/Medicare so in many cases there is government payment for the services.  The Danes have a new branch of government supported therapy which the government is also paying for.  The next time she complains about her job I’ll suggest she could change her therapy modalities and perhaps go into private practice in Denmark.  On second thought, that probably wouldn’t be a very good suggestion to make.  Via Clayton Cramer:

Danes take care of disabled to new level

Danish activists for the disabled are staunchly defending a government campaign that pays sex workers to provide sex once a month for disabled people.

Opposition parties call the program, officially known as ”Sex, irrespective of disability,” immoral.

”We spend a large proportion of our taxes rescuing women from prostitution. But at the same time we officially encourage carers to help contact with prostitutes,” said Social-Democrat spokesperson Kristen Brosboel.

Responded Stig Langvad of the country’s Disabled Association: ”The disabled must have the same possibilities as other people. Politicians can debate whether prostitution should be allowed in general, instead of preventing only the disabled from having access to it.”

Visiting Thailand?

Posted on by

Mandatory reading if you plan to spend some time in Thailand or those of you who think working on the holy day, Friday, is no big deal.  From Jihad Watch with the complete article on Sign On San Diego:

PATTANI, Thailand – The open-air market in this southern Thai city falls eerily quiet on Fridays. Most vendors stay home, terrorized by leaflets threatening to kill or cut off the ears of anyone who works on the Muslim holy day.

After 20 months of insurgent violence, the no-work threat has driven another nail into what is becoming an economic coffin in Thailand’s terrorized southern provinces.

…

Among the hundreds killed in the predominantly Muslim provinces of Pattani, Yala and Narathiwat are police and soldiers, but police records show that 80 percent are civilians – rubber tappers, shopkeepers, civil servants, construction workers and ice cream vendors.

Bombs have exploded at a department store, a cinema complex, the international airport at Hat Yai and a department store owned by the French Carrefour chain. Now investors and tourists have been driven off and some workers are leaving.

…

Soaring demand, driven by the booming Chinese economy, has doubled rubber’s price on the global market, but production in Pattani province has plummeted to a tenth of its volume in just a year, according to official statistics.

…

Prices of quarried rock have doubled, because the government severely limited the use of explosives that were reportedly being stolen for bomb attacks. The government eased the curbs as part of efforts to revive the economy, but Defense Minister Thammarak Isarangura Na Ayutthaya, while warily approving the measure, said he expected coffins would have to be stockpiled for bomb victims.

I might be about to adjust to not working on Friday, but severe restrictions on explosives?  Now they’ve done it!  We we have no viable options but to destroy the extremist Muslim culture world wide.

Microsofties to the rescue

Posted on by

I remember attending a party once where most people did not know who I was and where I worked at the time (a contractor for Microsoft).  I was just sort of hanging out and listening (that’s really active for me, often I just find a place to take a nap if I have to go to a party).  This woman started talking about how selfish rich people are and how they should be made to be more generous.  “So”, I asked, “What is your source of data for the claim that rich people are selfish?”  I know, that was a below the belt punch on a defenseless communist as per the following:

No one has the right to destroy another person’s belief by demanding empirical evidence.

Ann Landers, nationally syndicated advice columnist and Director of Handgun Control, Inc.

But being the scientist/engineer and generally socially clueless type I asked anyway.  The response was, “Do you have any evidence they are not?”  That was actually a fairly decent response–had I not been working at Microsoft for several years and knew many multi-millionaires.  Other people could have mentioned numerous famous foundations and philanthropists but I chose to give examples I had witnessed.  I told of going to Denny’s in Bellevue, a short distance from Microsoft, with other people form Microsoft for coffee and desert.  We hung around for an hour or two talking, sipping our drinks, and nibbling on our pies and cakes.  As we left we tossed money on the table to cover our bill and a tip.  There was probably six or seven people but the excess money for the tip was over $60.  No one cared if they got change for the $20 they tossed on the table.  That was common whenever I went out for meals with “rich people” from Microsoft–a $20 bill WAS change to them.  I further told the clueless commie that the head of my favorite charity (I didn’t tell her SAF was my favorite at the time) came in to talk to a club I belonged to at Microsoft (the Microsoft Gun Club) and told us that every year the largest single donation they received was from Microsoft Corporation.  Microsoft matches employee donations dollar for dollar to qualified 501(C)(3) organizations if you do the proper paperwork.  Those “rich selfish Microsoft employees” and their greedy corporation donations made a huge difference to that charitable organization.  In my several years of being around “rich people” I didn’t know a single person I would have considered selfish.  I even knew one manager who offered to pay for one of his employee’s sex change operation out of his own pocket (in return he wanted the testicles in a jar to put on his desk–but that’s another story I didn’t tell her).  In short, I had a very limited sample of probably 50 to 100 people in one geographical location at one company, but every bit of data I had contradicted her claim.  She didn’t have anything to offer and we changed subject–I wasn’t so clueless that I pushed the issue with her.

Ry, over at Mindless Bit Spew, is currently working at Microsoft and today reports on the activities of just one Microsoft private pilot who got time off from work to help with Katrina relief efforts.  Here is the first paragraph of his story published in a newsgroup internal to Microsoft:

Watching the destruction of Hurricane Katrina & the effect it was having on people’s lives, I wanted to help somehow. Our neighborhood organized a lunch, and we raised $3000 in just a few hours via donations by selling sandwiches to people simply driving buy. The company that I work at building a game called Flight Simulator, Microsoft Corporation, matched the donation. Wow, I was very impressed how people rallied and came together to support individuals thousands of miles away. Although I thought this effort on my neighborhoods part was awesome, I wanted to contribute more directly to the relief effort. I searched online for a way to contribute my airplane to fly people & supplies to the disaster stricken area.

People that bash capitalism need some exposure to reality.  Personally I know of no better place than what you see at Microsoft.  They’ve done some things wrong but the scales are so heavily weighted on the positive side you have to be actively avoiding reality to claim socialism/communism/fascism or whatever government scheme you might imagine is a “better way”.

SAF needs New Orleans info

Posted on by

From a KABA alert I just received:

SAF INVESTIGATING NEW ORLEANS GUN SEIZURES; NEEDS TO HEAR FROM YOU

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) is calling on members and supporters living in the New Orleans metropolitan area who have had firearms confiscated by police, federal officers or National Guard units to contact SAF headquarters at once.

Over the past three weeks, since the New Orleans and surrounding area was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, there have been disturbing reports about warrantless searches and seizures of privately-owned firearms.

“SAF, in cooperation with the National Rifle Association, has investigators on the ground and has retained legal counsel in preparation for possible action,” said SAF founder Alan M. Gottlieb.

SAF wants to speak directly with individuals who have actually had their firearms confiscated. If you, or someone you know, has had a firearm seized by authorities in the New Orleans area in the days following the hurricane, SAF needs to hear from you.

Contact SAF via e-mail at safalert@liberty.seanet.com. Please provide us with your full name, address, current working telephone number and the date and time of the firearm(s) seizure. Please also let us know the best time of day for us to reach you at that number.

Sincerely yours,

Alan M. Gottlieb
President, KeepAndBearArms.com

Mouse regrows limbs and internal organs

Posted on by

From the Sunday Times (London):

SCIENTISTS have created a “miracle mouse” that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals

…

The researchers have also found that when cells from the test mouse are injected into ordinary mice, they too acquire the ability to regenerate.

The discoveries raise the prospect that humans could one day be given the ability to regenerate lost or damaged organs, opening up a new era in medicine.

Details of the research will be presented next week at a scientific conference on ageing, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, at Cambridge University. Ellen Heber-Katz, professor of immunology at the Wistar Institute, an American biomedical research centre, says that the ability of mice at her laboratory to regenerate appears to be controlled by about a dozen genes.

She is still researching their exact functions, but it seems almost certain that humans have comparable genes.

…

The researchers suspect that the same genes could confer greater longevity and are measuring the animals’ survival rate. The mice are, however, only 18 months old and the normal lifespan is two years so it is too early to reach conclusions.

The implications are mind-boggling.

Other articles on the same topic from:

Does this give you a clue?

Posted on by

Israeli turned over the land they captured in ’67.  The dust hadn’t even settled from their exit when:

Palestinians surged triumphantly into demolished Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip early today, torching empty synagogues and firing shots into the air, as the last Israeli soldiers withdrew after 38 years of occupation.

I can see some really hostility expressed by making the synagogues into barns, or a manure storage storage facility but even that would be considerably over the top in my “book”–and I’m an atheist.  Burning them to the ground is stupid, completely irrational, or an expression of blinding hatred.  As Clayton Cramer said in his post:

Can you imagine the upset if Israelis had torched mosques in the Occupied Terroritories? There is something unnerving about this–rather like Krystallnacht translated into Arabic.

I’m guessing it’s blind hatred.

In another article — regarding the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases:

Al-Sayyid: Most certainly. The entire world, from the US to the most distant country, acknowledges that if they had stoned the fornicators, and prevented abomination, things would have been much better.

No wonder they call it “The Religion of Peace.”  Anyone that disagrees with their view of morality is killed and things are peaceful again.

They give us no acceptable options but to destroy their extremist culture.

Money spent on security

Posted on by

As I’ve posted before I think most of the money the government spends on “security” is a stupid waste and it is a threat to our freedom (for example see Universal ID Card Fatal Flaws and Stop Intrusive Airport Screenings).  Schneier, my security expert hero, got another editorial published where he talks about the waste portion of things:

Funding security based on movie plots looks good on television, and gets people reelected. But there are millions of possible scenarios, and we’re going to guess wrong. The billions spent defending airlines are wasted if the terrorists bomb crowded shopping malls instead.

And he tells us where the money should be spent:

Our nation needs to spend its homeland security dollars on two things: intelligence-gathering and emergency response. These two things will help us regardless of what the terrorists are plotting, and the second helps both against terrorist attacks and national disasters.

…

Money spent on emergency response makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is, whether terrorist-made or natural.

This includes good communications on the ground, good coordination up the command chain, and resources — people and supplies — that can be quickly deployed wherever they’re needed.

Similarly, money spent on intelligence-gathering makes us safer, regardless of what the next disaster is. Against terrorism, that includes the NSA and the CIA. Against natural disasters, that includes the National Weather Service and the National Earthquake Information Center.

The problem is politicians are very short-sighted.  Far-sighted politicians have a near zero chance of getting elected.  Can you imagine someone running for Governor of Louisiana on a platform of shutting down New Orleans and letting the Mississippi reroute itself 100+ miles to the west?  It’s probably the right thing to do and would have saved thousands of lives.  If our Federal government had been limited to it’s proper duties as defined in the Constitution economics would have forced them to “do the right” thing anyway.  But the Feds ended up spending billions on the levees and flood control to fight a battle that we will cannot win.  The question is how many times will the people of New Orleans lose this battle before the U.S. taxpayers say, “It’s time to face reality.  Pack your things and leave.”

See also:

New Orleans may have to face reality 
Another shot at New Orleans
Now do you believe me?
New Orleans was most vulnerable major city to hurricanes
More levee info

Searching for survivors

Posted on by

From the New York Times article New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes.  The caption is theirs not mine.


Police officers looking for survivors today in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

One has to wonder what they are going to do with the survivors when they find them.  See also this post of mine.

This is the way it will always happen

Posted on by

Background:

In the mid and late 90’s the anti-freedom activists were winning.  They were nearly dancing in the street.  Never mind they were dancing in the blood from each new school or mass public shooting.  Just when we would think they had been stopped another “event” would happen and they would get the extra little boost they needed to get that last vote to infringe on our freedom just a little bit (and sometimes a LOT) more.  At the range or in hushed voices late at night in someone’s den people would talk, “When you hear they took Frank’s guns you’ll know Frank is dead.”  “When they start going door-to-door that’s when they will realize they bit off more than they could chew.”  “They can have my guns–when they are empty.”

Even a brief look at history tells you that isn’t how it happens.  Look at Germany, Australia, England, and even Canada.  There is always an “event” that gives the anti-freedom people “justification” for infringing on inalienable rights.  They don’t just wake up some ordinary, bright sunny day and say, “This is the day we start shipping the Jews off to the camps.”  Or “This is the day we pass the law that makes firearms possession by private citizens illegal.”  By taking advantage of essentially random tragedies they can ratchet down on our freedoms at times when all but the most devoted freedom lovers have some doubt, some question about the wisdom of private people having freedom.  The majority, if for only a week or two, can be persuaded that maybe it really would be better to let government take care of them.  That it might be better for the the individual to give up an essential liberty for an imagined temporary safety.  Of course Ben Franklin has the proper response to that argument. But this pact with the devil is just too tempting for the majority when they are writhing in pain from the latest event.  And the pain from the event we know as Katrina and the aftermath in New Orleans make it seem acceptable to the majority–“Yes, they are taking everyone’s guns, but they had to for everyone’s safety.”

When it comes right down to it you will be far more alone than you think you will be when you are talking about it at the range with your shooting buddies.  Your fair weather friends will have “really important things” they have to do when the troops come down your street knocking on the doors and entering the houses one-by-one with the M-16’s at the ready (read about it and watch the video).  People, as much as they might say, “I don’t care what other people think” do care what other people think–at least some.  And when other people publicly approve of the confiscation and the majority have doubts about resisting it will be difficult to rally the numbers needed to make any conflict go decisively in your favor.  And how much have you practiced as a team?  Probably zero.  Nearly all shooting events are individual events or at best you have shooter/spotter relationship where there is just one gun between the two of you.  You’ll be going up against teams of shooters that have been practicing for at least months if not years as a team.  If you do that you better know exactly what your capabilities are and what you expect to accomplish.  Punching holes in a piece of stationary paper 30 feet away is a useful exercise but it doesn’t compare to shooting at a trained team of shooters.  Think things through. What is going to happen in the seconds after you fire your first shot?  If you make it that far.  You might get hit from 200 yards away by the sniper in the shadows from the second story window down the street as you bring your shotgun to your shoulder.  Have you even walked down your street thinking about the positions and angles for shooters to cover their teammates as they go door-to-door?  It’s going to be second nature for them to see what to you will take hours to figure out–if you are lucky.

If you think you are going to stand up to “them” going door-to-door then you need to know if you will have anyone helping.  If you haven’t practiced with them already then the answer is, almost for certain, “No.”  If you are going it alone then be darned sure you know the price you pay is worth what you are getting in return.  How many can you take out before your gun is forever silenced?

This is Why Boomershoot.

U of I giving away Katrina scholarships

Posted on by

From the University of Idaho website:

University of Idaho Launches Humanitarian Efforts To Assist Victims of Hurricane ‘Katrina’

Sept. 1, 2005

MOSCOW, Idaho — University of Idaho President Timothy White announced that the university is immediately accepting students who enrolled or planned to enroll at universities in the areas affected by hurricane “Katrina.” Students will be placed in fall classes with available space, with first priority given to Idaho residents. They also may enroll for the January, 2006 semester.

Ten scholarships for tuition, fee and housing for one year will be offered to any student whose college career has been interrupted by Katrina. Interested students may contact UI Admissions Office immediately, (208) 885-6326.

The University of Idaho also will collect humanitarian aid via cash, checks, credit cards and UI payroll deductions, said White. Contributions will be transferred directly to the American Red Cross. Such fund-raising efforts will be conducted at all campus sporting and cultural events throughout the year.

“As images and stories surface of the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina, we are just beginning to discover the devastation on communities, families and individuals in the southeastern U.S.,” said White.

“It is clear that our fellow Americans who have been affected will need the nation’s help. The University of Idaho is stepping forward to help and to motivate others to join us in this humanitarian effort.”

UI student groups have begun to discuss how best to get help to the hurricane victims, said Steve Janowiak, director of student activities and leadership. “Lots of our student service organizations and the associated student organization are talking about how they can help.”

Contacts: Nancy Hilliard, University of Idaho Communications, (208) 885-6567, hilliard@uidaho.edu

More articles on David Pruss

Posted on by

I found some more articles on David Pruss, the guy my brother and his dog helped find and arrest.  My brother gave me the link to the first one (if you read only one article this is the one to read) and said this about it, “It includes a picture of his shelter after the fir boughs and tarps were removed. Inside, you will see a small tent.”

  • Clearwater Tribune (new information with pictures)
  • Seattle PI (essentially the same as the Lewiston Morning Tribune article I posted a couple days ago)
  • Billings Gazette (essentially the same as the Lewiston Morning Tribune article I posted a couple days ago)
  • Casper Star Tribune (old information–from August 4th)

See also my previous posts:

Details from one of the dog teams

Posted on by

My brother was one of the people that helped catch the guy shooting up the logging equipment.  Here is his story:

From: Doug Huffman
Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 10:31 PM
To: Joe Huffman
Subject: Re: Were you and Nick one of the teams?

Hi Joe,

Yes,  Nick and I were there when he was arrested.  Also, it was tear gas
(CS) not pepper spray.  If you look at his picture, you will see his
left arm is in a sling.  He was on his hands and knees coming out of his
shelter, his right hand lifted off the floor and revealed his MAK-90 on
the floor, he moved his hand out, leaving the rifle on the ground.  Then
for some unexplained reason, he started to back up, his right hand moved
back towards the rifle.  Guy Cordle very nearly shot him in the back
with a 12 ga at that point, in a split second decision, he decided he
could stop the subject with a hard kick to the left arm right where it
connects to the shoulder.  That knocked him flat on his face and removed
his hand from the proximity of the rifle.  They took him to the ER and
they apparently put his arm in a sling.

I went with two deputies on Monday afternoon after he stole the coffee
with my GPS and compass.  We stopped at various points around the canyon
where he was and took GPS points and compass reading from the
directional antenna on a fish and game locator.  When you get too close,
the receiver would receive signal from any direction, so we had to be
back a ways and didn’t take the receiver into the woods with us the next
morning.  I went home and plotted it out on graph paper, determined the
most likely point and programmed it into my GPS and set it to take us to
that location.  We went in the next morning at day break, Nick and I in
the middle with 5 others.  Nick was there to alert us if he was hiding
in the bushes, or behind a log.  Moving very slowly, we moved about 1/2
mile in 2 hours before he was located.  My GPS point was about 200 yards
off.  Nick was some help, but wasn’t the one who made the find.  He kept
wanting to go east and the closer we got, the more intent and excited he
got.  We were probably 50 yards away from his shelter when we spotted a
platic bag hanging from a tree up on the  hillside to our right, that
was beside his shelter.  I am writing up a complete story, but it will
probably be weeks before I finish it.  The other dog team was the blood
hound we got from South Carolina.  Bruce Hanson and the bloodhound were
on the North side of the canyon, watching in case the subject made a run
for it that way.  There were  “snipers” on all sides of the canyon with
high powered scoped rifles.  They didn’t have the authority to shoot on
sight, but would try to challenge and stop the subject if we drove him
out of the canyon.

… [unrelated material deleted] …

Doug

More levee info

Posted on by

The Miami Herald has the story:

Floods unavoidable, Army engineers say


The Army Corp of Engineers said recent studies on strengthening New Orleans’ levee system, designed decades ago, had not made much progress.

BY PETER CAREY

Knight Ridder News Service

The levee system that protected New Orleans from hurricane-spawned surges along Lake Pontchartrain was never designed to survive a storm the size of Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

The levees were built to withstand only a Category 3 storm, something projections suggested would strike New Orleans only once every two or three centuries, the commander of the corps, Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, told reporters during a conference call. Katrina was a Category 4 storm.

”Unfortunately, that occurred in this case,” Strock said.

OLD TECHNOLOGY

Strock said the levee system’s design was settled on a quarter of a century ago, before the current numerical system of classifying storms was in widespread use. He said studies had begun recently on strengthening the system to protect against Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, but hadn’t progressed very far.

Strock said that despite a May report by the Corps’ Louisiana district that a lack of federal funding had slowed construction of hurricane protection, nothing the Corps could have done recently would have prevented Katrina from flooding New Orleans.

”The levee projects that failed were at full project design and were not really going to be improved,” Strock said.

`EVERYBODY KNEW’

Strock’s comments drew immediate criticism from flood-protection advocates, who said that the Corps’ May report was a call for action and a complaint about insufficient funding, and that no action took place.

”The Corps knew, everybody knew, that the levees had limited capability,” said Joseph Suhayda, a retired director of the Louisiana State University’s Water Resources and Research Institute.

”Because of exercises and simulations, we knew that the consequences of overtopping [water coming over the levees] would be disastrous. People were playing with matches in the fireworks factory and it went off,” he said.

Suhayda, an expert in coastal oceanography, said, “the fact the levee failed is not according to design. If it was overtopped, it’s because it was lower in that spot than other spots. The fact that it was only designed for a Category 3 meant it was going to get overtopped. I knew that. They knew that. There were limits.”

NO SECURITY?

Some critics Thursday questioned the usefulness of levees, saying that all of them fail eventually.

”There are lots of ways for levees to fail. Overtopping is just one of them,” said Michael Lindell, of Texas A&M University’s Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center. ‘There’s a lot of smoke screen about `low probabilities.’ Low probabilities just means ‘Takes a long time.’ ”

Strock said stopping the flow of water over the levees has proved to be ”a very challenging effort.” Engineers have been unable to reach the levees and have had to draw up plans based only on observations from the air. ”We, too, are victims in this situation,” he said.

In Louisiana, Army Corps officials said they hoped that one break, in what’s known as the 17th Street Canal, might be closed by the end of Thursday, but that a second break in the London Avenue canal is proving more intractable.

Short sections of the walls that protected the city from Lake Pontchartrain caved in under storm surges, including an area that recently had been strengthened.

A fact sheet issued by the Corps in May said that seven construction projects in New Orleans had been stalled for lack of funding. It noted that the budget proposed by President Bush for 2005 was $3 million and called that amount insufficient to fund new construction contracts.

MONEY CRUNCH

”We could spend $20 million if the funds were provided,” the fact sheet said. Two major pump stations needed to be protected against hurricane storm surges, the fact sheet said, but the budgets for 2005 and 2006 “will prevent the corps from addressing these pressing needs.”

Acknowledging delays in construction, Corps officials in Louisiana said that those projects weren’t where the failures occurred. ”They did not contribute to the flooding of the city,” said Al Naomi, a senior project manager.

”The design was not adequate to protect against a storm of this nature,” he said. “We were not authorized to provide protection to Category 4 or 5 design.”

No matter where or how you live you have risks.  It could be a natural disaster such as tornadoes, floods, hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes, mudslides, volcanoes, etc.  Or it could be man related such as crime, traffic accidents, air pollution, water pollution, etc.  New Orleans didn’t just have a risk of some random future event that would affect a small percentage of the people.  They were actively fighting the water on a daily basis that threatened catastrophe for the majority of people living there.  They had no hope of holding things off for more than a few decades.  Read my post from a year ago.  They could not sustain the fight for much longer.  The Mississippi was/is depositing silt far, far faster than they could deal with it.  It was a huge expensive gamble either way.  To move the port to the natural location 100+ miles to the west or to stay.  Long term they have to move.  It might have been 20 or even 50 years before the wisdom of that decision would have been confirmed beyond any doubt.  But it would have been confirmed eventually.  

I said a year ago they should have quit the “game”.  They should have packed up their stuff and left the playing field.  They should have dealt with reality on their own rather than having Mother Nature swat them out of the park with a clue-by-category-four.

Update: Michelle Malkin has another story on the levees from 1999 plus a fair amount of history on the topic.

New Orleans was most vulnerable major city to hurricanes

Posted on by

The title of this post is a near exact quote from the May 2005 Popular Science article.  I changed the quote slightly.  They said ‘is’ instead of ‘was’.  At this point in time I figure New Orleans doesn’t exist.  More quotes from the article:

It takes Scott Kiser only a split second to name the one city in the U.S., and probably the world, that would sustain the most catastrophic damage from a category-5 hurricane. “New Orleans,” says Kiser, a tropical-cyclone program manager for the National Weather Service. “Because the city is below sea level—with the Mississippi River on one side and Lake Pontchartrain on the other—it is a hydrologic nightmare.” The worst problem, he explains, would be a storm surge, a phenomenon in which high winds stack up huge waves along a hurricane’s leading edge. In New Orleans, a big enough surge would quickly drown the entire city.

…

Today, parts of New Orleans lie up to 20 feet below sea level, and the city is sinking at a rate of about nine millimeters a year. “This makes New Orleans the most vulnerable major city to hurricanes,” says John Hall of the Army Corps of Engineers. “That’s because the water has to go down, not up, to reach it.”

…

New Orleans has nearly completed its Hurricane Protection Project, a $740-million plan led by Naomi to ring the city with levees that could shield residents from up to category-3 storm surges. Meanwhile, Winer and others at the Army Corps are considering a new levee system capable of holding back a surge from a category-5 hurricane like Ivan, which threatened the city last year.

…

The category-5 levee idea, though, is still in the early planning stages; it may be decades before the new barriers are completed. Until then, locals had better keep praying to Helios.

Katrina was a category 4/5 storm.  I guess the locals didn’t do enough praying and else figure out how to get out of town permanently months or years ago.  This wasn’t any big surprise to the locals or anyone with a room temperature I.Q. that had studied the problem for more than a few minutes.

Barb and I will be donating some money to the relief effort and if someone knows of a volunteer organization helping with the Katrina mess that wants a middle aged guy with heavy equipment, computer, firearms, explosives, and/or farm-boy type skills–let me know.  I have some spare time on my hands right now.

They caught him

Posted on by

A couple weeks ago I posted about a guy staying out in woods and damaging logging equipment.  The suspect is in the local county jail now.  I’m glad no one got hurt as it seemed likely at the time.  The suspect said he wanted to kill some cops.  I had done some brainstorming with my brother about this and hadn’t come up with the solution they used although one would have thought that two electrical engineers would have been the first to thing of it.  From the Lewiston Morning Tribune:

Sheriff reels in Weippe suspect


By DAVID JOHNSON
of the Tribune

“He took the bait.”

That’s how Clearwater County Sheriff Alan Hengen Tuesday described the early morning arrest of 34-year-old David Pruss in the woods about one and a half miles northwest of Weippe.

“We knew he liked coffee.”

Pruss, who’d been wanted for the better part of three months on a warrant for alleged malicious destruction of property and burglary, remained in the county jail at Orofino Tuesday night and could face additional charges, Hengen said.

The sheriff and his deputies had been chasing a suspect since early June who allegedly had shot up some logging equipment, broken into a number of cabins and buildings and otherwise eluded authorities.

Hengen said deputies learned that the suspect seemed to always steal coffee when he had a chance. So they placed a “signaling unit” in the bottom of a plastic can of coffee, and put the can in a building where the suspect had previously entered several times.

“We tried a lot of things, but that one worked,” Hengen said. Within a week, the can of coffee was gone. Homing in on the signal from the coffee can, deputies were able to triangulate an approximate location, said Hengen, and Tuesday’s predawn raid was organized. Two dog teams and 17 enforcement officers entered the forested area and closed in on the location, the sheriff said. They found a hut made of poles that were tied together and covered with pine boughs.

“We got him while he was sleeping,” Hengen said. He said Pruss at first refused to come out of the hut and deputies used pepper spray. According to a press release from the sheriff’s office, Pruss was “believed to have been reaching” for a Mac-90 assault rifle that was found underneath him. Hengen said a .357-caliber magnum revolver also was found.

“He had like a tent in there,” Hengen said of the hut, which he described as about 6-feet square.

Deputies also found military and SWAT-type clothing, said Hengen, similar to clothing worn by a suspect that appears in a surveillance camera photo taken more than a month ago where logging equipment had been shot up. According to the press release, other items allegedly taken from the logging site were found where Pruss was arrested.

Pruss, formerly of Utah and Montana, came to Weippe about a year ago, according to residents in town. Authorities said he is thought to have ties to fringe militia groups. Hengen said earlier this month that he feared the suspect they were seeking was trying to lure his deputies into an ambush. According to the news release, Pruss “is believed to have told others his intent was to damage public infrastructure in order to lure Clearwater County Sheriff’s Deputies into the woods for the purpose of picking them off.”

Since the first week in June, Hengen’s department had been investigating several burglaries and reports of property being destroyed. There had been damage to power transformers, phone pedestals, a small hydroelectric plant and the logging equipment, according to the news release. Several businesses and residences also had been burglarized, authorities said.

Total damage is estimated to have exceeded $100,000, Hengen said.

Weippe residents earlier this month voiced mixed thoughts about the suspect, some saying he was harmless and others expressing disgust that someone was shooting up logging equipment. Many people said they were locking their doors for the first time.

Hengen said the destruction of property seemed to trail off over the past few weeks and he thinks the suspect was “just trying to wait us out.” Most of the logging equipment that had been damaged belonged to Kenneth Miller, whose equipment and vehicles had been located at a site in the Winters Creek area near Weippe.

In addition to sheriff deputies, Hengen said U.S. Forest Service personnel and members of Clearwater County Search and Rescue participated in numerous searches for the suspect.

Authorities ask that anyone finding more hut-like structures in the woods around Weippe call the sheriff’s office and stay away from the structures. The same goes for any equipment, clothing or other stored items that might be found.

Quote of the day–Employees at A.J.’s Produce Co.

Posted on by

You loot, we shoot!

Employees at A.J.’s Produce Co.
A spray-painted bright-red warning for would-be thieves on the sides of the building on Chartres Street in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans.
From 2TheAdvocate.com
August 31, 2005

Now do you believe me?

Posted on by

Michelle Malkin gives a good overview of the situation in New Orleans with links to pictures and video.  There is massive flooding with both airports underwater, the mayor estimates 80% of the city is underwater–some of it 20 feet deep, at least one major bridge was destroyed, etc, etc. 

Steve Sabuldowsky of BayouBuzz.com says:

Unless the two block breach in Bucktown is fixed, New Orleans which is already 80% flooded according to Mayor Nagin will destroy the City of New Orleans.  In my view, that includes the CBD and French Quarter.

…

New Orleans might not be able to survive the total inundation of water that is rising so quickly and causing so much damage.  With Slidell, St. Bernard and other cities and Parishes so completely devastated it will take more than a Marshall Plan to restore Louisiana to its glory.  It will take a miracle for the city of the Saints.

One of the commenter’s to a previous post of mine asked, “Do you really think that it’s possible that the entire city will be completely gone after this hurricane?”  Yes, it’s possible.  It almost for certain will not be completely gone this time, but it is possible it will happen next time.  Next time could be next month, next year, or 10 years from now.  It won’t wait 50 years, the technology just doesn’t exist and almost for certain won’t exist in time to save this city.  This time it will just be 20% (a number I pulled out of the air, or should I say water?) of the net worth of the city will be destroyed.  Someday, in the not too distant future, New Orleans will be a water and silt filled archaeological site.

Serious consideration should be given to only rebuilding enough of New Orleans to use the port temporarily.  Spend the money saved on building a new port where the Mississippi natural outlet is (something like 100+ miles to the west).  Move the people in the path of the new waterway out of there.  Then gradually over a course of days, weeks, months, whatever, allow the river to change it’s course.  Then tell people in the firmest terms available that if they build below sea level they are asking for Darwin Awards.  If they persist then let them collect their awards.

Update: I’m not the only one talking about giving up on New Orleans.

Update2: Novel application of a shotgun:

People used axes, and in at least one case a shotgun, to blast holes in roofs so they could escape their attics. Many who had not yet been rescued could be heard screaming for help, police said.

But is this allowed under the “sporting purposes” criteria of GCA 68?

Another shot at New Orleans

Posted on by

I commented on this sort of thing last September.  New Orleans had a miss then when Ivan came to town.  But it appears Ivan was a poor shot and minor caliber compared to Katrina–scheduled to hit tomorrow morning:

Hundreds of thousands of New Orleans residents fled inland on Sunday as Hurricane Katrina strengthened into one of the fiercest U.S. storms ever seen and barrelled towards the low-lying Gulf Coast city.

…

Katrina had a central pressure — a measure of a storm’s intensity — of 902 millibars, which would make it one of the four strongest storms on record. The Labour Day hurricane of 1935 that hit the Florida Keys, killing some 600 people, was the strongest with a minimum central pressure of 892 millibars on landfall.

They are evacuating the city.  It’s quite possible this will be the last evacuation.  The city is below sea level and it is only going to get worse as time goes on.  As I said last year:

My belief is that long term the people and businesses of New Orleans should close up and move out.  Barring some extraordinary technological breakthroughs in earth moving (I’m talking raising an entire city from deep down under the water soaked earth) and/or lowering the sea this battle cannot be won.  It’s better to surrender gracefully than to let the enemy annihilate you.  Spend the billions on salvage and rebuilding in another location, but surrender the current New Orleans to it’s muddy grave.

This could be the end of New Orleans.  Interesting times we live in.

Update: I’ve been reading some of the articles about Katrina and New Orleans.  They are incredibly sobering.