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Beautiful Fall Foliage Photos From Our Mountain

October 19, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

We live on this little mountain in Upstate New York. New England has been famous for centuries for the spectacular fall foliage color display. Due to the mix of trees, we get a month-long series of colorful contrasts and changes. Coupled with changes in the weather, when the sun shines or the clouds move over this amazing landscape, everything changes radically. It is a never-ending wonder to watch each hour of each day go by, contemplating the contours of these mountains under constantly changing conditions.

These photos are from the beginning of October until today. The last photo shows the heavy frost we had last night as it is now edging more towards winter. But bright, sunny, even warm days still lie ahead. The trees know that it is time to suck out all their sap from the leaves and branches to the deep roots so it can be sheltered all winter long. Then, in the spring, this vital fluid flows back to the highest branches and the trees resume growing.

So let us not be angry about politics or economics but sit back and look at Mother Nature as she does her annual strip tease up north, here in New York state. Click on all images to enlarge.

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Billions Of Dollars Messes In Texas

September 16, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Hurricane Ike pretty much destroyed or rendered uninhabitable, most of the single housing units in Galveston and other barrier island communities. Time to estimate the losses and this will all impact on the housing crisis because I believe that much of the housing here will be abandoned except if the US government pays people to rebuild. But the US government can't afford to constantly rebuild houses damaged by hurricanes. And insurers like AIG won't do this, either. They can't afford to do this. Or rather, the realistic insurance premiums would be much too high for homeowners.

Here are some videos of the damage:

One of the communities that was totally wiped out, literally, was Port Bolivar. This community was on the more destructive side of the hurricane's surge and had no seawall to break the waves up. Helicopters flying over this region see only the cement pads of most of the homes that used to stand there. Anyone sheltering in these missing homes probably didn't survive. But there are no bodies since they were swept to sea.

I do hope everyone evacuated. This should be a warning to anyone tempted to ride out even a category 2 hurricane if they are living on the edge of the sea.

Out of power and 'unsafe,' Galveston starts long cleanup

CNN) -- As Galveston's leaders on Monday repeatedly urged its residents to stay away, people who never left tried to make the best of their muggy, tree-strewn, powerless city.
*snip*
City manager Steve LeBlanc said people like Reid who remain in Galveston should leave. There's not enough clean drinking water to serve the needs of the 15,000 to 20,000 people who stayed on the island, he said Monday, and there would be a "downward spiral if everybody started coming back."

The city's resources are "stretched to the max," and it could be a month before electricity is restored. The clean-up will be massive, he said, and the city is "unsafe."

North of Galveston, Texas Gov. Rick Perry urged residents who evacuated Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, not to hurry back to their homes.

The displaced population is now homeless. After hurricane Katrina, it should be obvious that the state governments must shelter large numbers of people for long periods of time after hurricanes. Of course, limiting population growth on vulnerable shorelines is the best option. But people are drawn to these areas and these zones are very popular destinations. Living in these places weakens the natural forces that regenerate these barrier islands.

Developments on barrier islands should be eliminated or tremendously reduced. But this is very unpopular so it won't be done. People living in these zones don't prepare for hurricanes by setting aside emergency funds. Politicians have grown accustomed to having Uncle Sam do this for them. While they let rampant housing development to mushroom in these same, vulnerable regions.

Dallas newspaper:

Despite images of mass destruction along Galveston’s coast, many of the city’s historic structures and the new high rises overlooking the Gulf of Mexico survived the onslaught of Hurricane Ike, residents and real estate developers said Sunday.

While no one was downplaying devastation on the 30-mile-long island, treasured historic sites in Galveston’s Strand area, which survived the huge hurricane of 1900, are still standing, as are the new high rises that have sprouted along the coast in a recent $6 billion real estate boom.

Dwayne Jones, executive director of the Galveston Historical Foundation, said Sunday that most of the damage to the island’s oldest structures occurred north of Broadway, facing the bay. “There is significant wind and flood damage to many of the buildings in that area,” he said. Jones has evacuated to Austin and was speaking from the Preservation Texas offices, but said he has been in contact with people in Galveston.

So the solution is to park high rises right on the edge of barrier islands that are being undermined by a rising ocean? Talk about insane!

I know from news reports that emergency crews and TV reporters were terrified during the category 2 storm due to the high winds and the surging seas. Some of these high rises took significant damage! If this were a category 5 storm, these high rises may have survived but would be like the ones in Cancun 10 years ago when a category 4 storm left ships stuck inside of the third story of these hotels and all the windows were blown out. Weathering and surviving a mere category 2 hurricane is no advertisement of strength.

The added blow of this storm has worsened the housing crisis. Perhaps, significantly. I went poking about the web, trying to see how much money has been lost. I found a page with data that is 8 years out of date.

From 2000: Galveston, Texas Mortgage and Housing Information

So, at the very beginning of the housing bubble, half of the homes in Galveston had mortgages and only 6% had second mortgages. We know that the frenzy of lending from 2001-2002-2006 put many, many homes into hock. Second mortgages proliferated. I would think that the statistics today would be much closer to 80% of the homes there are deep in debt. To discover what the real estate market was like before the storm, I looked up houses for sale there.

Home for Sale by Owner in Port Bolivar

Property Address:
2012 Houston
Port Bolivar, Texas 77650

Property Description:

This is a Operating Vacation Rental located on the Bolivar Peninsula with spectacular views of the Gulf, the Marsh, the North Jetty, the Galveston/Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Island. 1 1/2 miles from the Ferry Landing across from Galveston just 3 miles across bay and 10 miles down the road to Crystal Beach. For pictures and more info go to www.c-covington.com The home has 1600 sq.ft of living space, fully furnished. Living room (19’x21’);Dining room (8.3’x11’); Kitchen (11’x11.6’); Decorated in Bamboo, Large deck on front of home also enclosed sun porch (8.3'x17.6')has 9 windows overlooking Bolivar Roads, where the ships lie in wait to await passage to Galveston or Houston docks. It has 4 Bedrooms - 2 Baths - 1st Bdrm (13.6'x15.7')Canopy King (Oriental theme); 2nd Bdrm (10.8'x11.10') King (Jungle rm); 3rd Bdrm(11.6'x16.4') 2 Dbl/Twn Bunk (Children's rm); 4th Bdrm (9.2'x11.6') Queen. Sunporch Trundle bed Amenities: Central Air/Heat, Satelite TV, TV/VCR & Multi-game table (pool, soccer, basketball, etc.) in children's room, Linens included, DVD player, Library of VCR tapes both children and adult, Poker Table/w chips; numerous games/puzzles/toys, highchair, Portable playpen and crib. Carpet, Fully equiped Kitchen, Blender/Food Processor, Coffee Pot, Toaster, Popcorn Microwave, Dishwasher, Microwave, Ceiling Fan in each room, Shower downstairs, Bicycles, Fish Cleaning Table w/hot & cold water, Gas BBQ Pit, Swing, and built-in picnic table. Deck furniture. Fully concrete under house with parking for 2 cars also enclosed work area with washer, dryer, and shower.

Here is the satellite image of where this house used to stand, taken before the storm:

In the videos at the top, one of them shows Port Bolivar and it is the helicopter video showing virtually no houses left standing at all. This house no longer exists. It was an investment property going for over a quarter million dollars. If we multiply this amount with the number of houses that vanished during the storm, this would probably exceed $500,000,000. That is, five hundred million dollars. Port Bolivar was a very small community. There are many tranches floating around the planet that expect the owners of these now-totally destroyed buildings, expecting someone to keep on paying down the mortgages! And this won't happen. These segments of tranches are now dead meat.

It gets worse.

Open house:
2008-08-01 to 2008-09-09

Buy this single family home for sale by owner. This fabulous house is equipped with four bedrooms, four baths and a vast garage. Inside you will love Waterfront, Fireplace, Patio, Boating, Alarm, Gas Range, Central AC, Marble Floors, Wheelchair Accessible, Carpet. School district: Galveston i.s.d.. At this price this home will sell quickly! Price: $949,500

A MILLION DOLLAR HOME had its open house literally while the hurricane's waves were already battering the barrier island! I am betting, since this was put on the market in a 'self-selling' mode, the owners were desperate to be their own brokers since they couldn't afford to sell it via a broker due to the fees eating up what little profit there was to be had. Now, these people have no home to sell, not at a million bucks. Let's say, just 1,000 homes in this area were million dollar babies. This is a billion dollars in losses!

The housing bubble endangered US finances since these very expensive homes are uninsurable in any realistic way. Any mega-natural event will wipe out any insurers which is why insurers are in terrible trouble and the cost of insuring a house in geologically and weather-hazard regions have climbed beyond most homeowner's abilities to pay. The US government should not be in the business of insuring hyper-expensive housing. Banks should NEVER be extending mortgages to buildings in very inappropriate, dangerous or stupid places!

Instead, the opposite has happened: the entire US banking and government systems are now in danger of collapse or are collapsing because people were given vast sums of money to build in very stupid places. And any inevitable natural event ends up hammering the entire financial systems of our nation! I don't think it is very wise for a nation to put itself into bankruptcy trying to coddle people who want to live in extremely hazardous zones, in extremely overprices houses! If they want to play this game, they can do it on their own dime.

I built my own home, myself. It has no mortgage on it. It is quite possible for people to do what I did. But people want to tap into the reasonable system for building and buying homes but doing this in places where we know, statistically, the houses have a high chance of being totally wiped out every 50 years or less! I rebuilt houses that were up to 200 years old. These were built in safe regions with few hazards. But the houses that withstood all the hurricanes of the last 100 years in Texas were Victorian buildings on very specific sites that were built with materials few can afford today. How many people can afford to build stone houses that have walls 2' thick?

Virtually no one. And the internal damage of even these stout structures is still very expensive. When people built houses in 1860, they had no electricity, no insulation and little plumbing. Today, houses are extremely vulnerable to water damage thanks to modern building materials and systems.

Galveston, TX, 77554 - For Sale

Don't miss this move in well cared single family home with three beautiful bedrooms and two perfect baths. This would be a great home for a family. Price: $339,000

Click on Street View to see how flat and desolate the area was before the hurricane smashed everything.
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The average price of housing in Galveston before the bubble was around $130,000. It looks to me that the price average before this hurricane wrecked most of the housing was at around $275,000. If there were 20,000 homes destroyed in this sector and that is the average price, the cost to our government, to pay off the mortgages or rebuild these useless homes would be....$5 billion.

In other words, the cost of one month in Afghanistan and Iraq. We can't be spending this money doing very stupid and futile things in these distant lands while passively watching our entire financial infrastructure collapse here at home. We are treating our nation as if it were a barrier island and we are now drowning like rats, in red ink.

The US has to make choices. And one of these is to cease and desist in our imperial overspending. We just cannot afford this. Saving the people of Texas is more important than ruling Muslims who hate our guts. We are losing the war against nature here at home as well as the war for hearts and minds in the Middle East. Note how the media doesn't connect these events. When talking about the stock market crash, they don't mention the hyper-expensive wars. But Mother Nature will teach us sharp lessons in economic matters as well as the potent powers she possesses.

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Hurricane Ike Disappears Into Canada

September 14, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Today, we had suffocating heat and 100% humidity as Hurricane Ike spun past, over the Great Lakes. Even though I live more than a hundred miles away from this epic storm, the effects of its passage were obvious even this far away. So I took a series of pictures during the day which shows the massive size and strange effects of this great hurricane.

UPDATE: violent winds tonight as part of former hurricane Ike has made a sudden swerve right towards my mountain! Had to run around in the dark with the dogs and Fluff, stowing away anything that is loose or putting inside the lawn furniture, etc. Even the chickens are complaining to me, sleepily. 50 mph winds is pretty strong, actually. What a storm!

Here is the position of the hurricane as it passed far to the west of where I live:

I live where Massachusetts and Vermont border New York. The rain is far, far from my home. The picture below is from noon, the first clouds came scrambling in from the south. The winds, which were minor in the morning, suddenly began to get quite gusty. I was on the ladder, two stories up, working on the gutters when I had to stop due to the increasingly blustery winds.

By mid-afternoon, the temperatures on my normally cool mountain reached nearly 90 degrees F. This is abnormal even in high summer. And with the strong winds, very unusual. This picture below is from 2 pm.

The high cirrus clouds were always visible throughout the afternoon. But gradually, much lower clouds began to race towards us, heading toward Canada. Some very low, very dark little clouds scuttled right overhead, one by one, like little black sheep.

By 4 pm, the light changed. People watching hurricanes from afar often mention the eerie light changes. It is quite stunning. The thick humidity that masked the nearby hills from my view suddenly began to glow. This is similar to the glow we get before a rainbow appears in front of a storm only there was no rain, just an immense amount of humidity.

The sky to the east became soft and pink.

But when I looked straight towards the fading hurricane in the early evening, the sky was prematurely dark and the thick air settled down on us as the wind paused. All was quiet.

It is ten o'clock at night now. And the wind is still gusting again. The moon has a rainbow ring as small clouds continue to scuttle past, all heading northwards still! This was one big storm.

Ike's aftermath: The return of $4 gas

(CNNMoney.com) -- Gas prices are poised to shoot back toward record highs after Hurricane Ike's direct hit to the heart of the nation's oil refineries, analysts said.

The average price of gasoline nationwide has already shot up 12 cents in the past two days to $3.795 a gallon, according to figures released by the AAA Sunday. And the average price of gas is now at or above $4 in Alaska, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and South Carolina.

In addition, Hurricane Ike could turn out to be the third-most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history, according to preliminary forecasts from a firm that does loss estimates for the insurance industry.

The US nearly shut down in June as gas prices made travel nearly impossibly expensive. I noticed the lack of cars going up and down Rt. 22. I have a great view of that minor highway and it was like a grave yard. When gas prices fell, everyone jumped back into their cars and there was a sense of optimism. But now, we are right back where we were in June.

Bush has announced he will release oil from the reserves but this is stupid, of course. He only knows how to do the dumbest things. The problem isn't a lack of oil. The problem is, the refineries in the Gulf are messed up. And getting things going it going to take a while! This is the nature of major hurricanes. We can't evade this.

Price freezes coupled with rationing WOULD work but the US doesn't want the harsh solutions of the seventies. We want to have fun, not be responsible or fair. So we will have to live with rank price gouging and hoarding of gasoline. This will deplete the US economy further but this doesn't seem to bother our rulers very much. After all, they make lots of money by allowing hoarding and price gouging.

Here are some CNN stories of people who were very foolish but survived:

Among the coastal Texas residents who found themselves in trouble after Ike hit were Paul and Kathi Norton. They overslept as Ike closed in on their home, so they decided to tough it out because their evacuation route was already flooded.

Though their Crystal Beach, Texas, home, about 20 miles northeast of Galveston, was on 14-foot stilts, the couple was concerned, they told CNN affiliate KHOU-TV in Houston, Texas.

"My husband made me wear a life jacket inside our house," Kathi Norton said. "Thank God for that, or I couldn't be here."

Early Saturday, about two hours before Ike officially made landfall, high winds and rising floodwaters began battering their home. The house began collapsing, and "if the flagpole wouldn't have stopped the house, the house would've crushed us," Kathi Norton said.

"It took the floor up, buckled down and took it right off the piling. And we dove out the door and grabbed the staircase, and we floated off," Kathi Norton told KHOU on Sunday after the couple was delivered in a National Guard helicopter to an evacuation point in Texas City, Texas.

No possessions are worth losing one's life. Living is a one-time thing. Getting or keeping stuff is an activity. But living is more than a mere activity. It is literally life and death. Many people pretended they wanted to leave but forgot or fell asleep or something. But the honest truth is, most wanted to guard their possessions. As if they could contest with the mighty powers of Mother Nature when she is shoving miles of ocean on shore.

Matt Damon, Wyclef Jean visit Haiti city in ruins

Cries of adulation — and hunger — followed Haitian-born singer Wyclef Jean and actor Matt Damon as they toured flood-ravaged Gonaives on Sunday to call attention to widespread suffering in the marooned city. Tropical Storm Hanna and Hurricane Ike submerged the Haitian city and cut off roadways. Where waters have receded, streets remain a stinking mud bath and homes are carpeted with muck and encrusted pots, pans and laundry.

"I'm speechless, I can't believe it," said Damon, looking down from a U.N. helicopter at people living on the rooftops of flooded homes.

Haiti is one of the basket case countries. Even tropical storms now cause terrible devastation. This is due to deforestation as well as overpopulation. The US isn't overpopulated. But it does have concentrations of populations in inappropriate places. And the costs of these hurricanes grows each storm as more people park more stuff in the path of obvious destruction.

Ike's death toll keeps climbing

(AP) -- Hurricane Ike and its remnants are now being blamed in at least 16 deaths in the U.S. And the number is expected to climb.

Most of the fatalities have occurred outside Texas as the storm moved northward. The number includes two golfers killed by a falling tree in Nashville and a woman killed by a tree in Ohio.
*snip*
The Gulf energy industry has begun assessing its damage. At least 10 oil and gas platforms were destroyed and some pipelines were damaged.

I see videos shot from the air that clearly shows many houses utterly smashed. And dead people don't call for help or wave down rescuers. They won't be found for months. It took several months for the victims of Hurricane Katrina to be found and a number of them were never counted, being swept to sea. When the death toll from a hurricane is greater when it weakens to a tropical depression, we can be certain the people who bore the brunt of the worst of it, are uncounted.

I expect the number to climb rapidly as the water recedes.

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Hurricane Ike Will Destroy Galveston

September 12, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Matthew 7:26: 'And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand.' Tonight, Hurricane Ike is repeating history nearly exactly 100 years later than the great Hurricane of 1900. Galveston, instead of being returned to nature, was nearly totally rebuilt behind hopelessly low seawalls. For the oceans are rising thanks to global warming. As per usual, not all people evacuated extremely dangerous sand spit island communities. They may die tonight. It is all so very sad, in the end.

Here is Ike in Cuba:

The size of the waves clearly shows us, this is one powerful storm. Now, it is heading into Texas.

Hurricane Ike's Sprawl a Meteorological Mystery

Hurricanes come in all sizes, from speedy little cyclones with small sharp teeth to giants that maw and pummel away at large swaths of earth for days. Ike is one of the latter -- a super-sized storm with winds howling over vast fetches of water, piling up massive storm surges like those now being seen in Texas.

Considering the vastly different dangers posed by these storms, it's natural to wonder just why some storms get so big while others stay small, despite having the same hurricane-force winds. Why, in other words, is Ike such a titan?
*snip*
"This is actually a very important and unresolved question in the science right now," said senior scientist Chris Davis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. There are a few theories out there, he said, some of which look to the number of cloud clusters around a storm in its early days.

The dynamics of the hurricanes this year are quite different from 2005. We had the hottest recorded summer that year. Each hurricane, and there were many, would suddenly jump from smaller category 1 hurricanes to massive category 5 monsters. In the case of Rita and Wilma, this transformation took less than three hours! A record in speed of growth.

Hurricane Ike is not so dynamic in wind speed but has far, far more WATER than the 2005 hurricanes. In the past, we have seen such monster hurricanes. Looking at this radar shot below, we can see the huge rain band which is many miles wide and far vaster than the 2005 hurricanes which were much tighter and faster.

The sheer size of the active parts of this storm nearly fills the entire Gulf. The last time I saw one that was this wet was in the mid-1990's.

Hurricane Mitch:

Hurricane Mitch was one of the deadliest and most powerful hurricanes on record in the Atlantic basin, with maximum sustained winds of 180 mph (290 km/h). The storm was the thirteenth tropical storm, ninth hurricane, and third major hurricane of the 1998 Atlantic hurricane season. At the time, Hurricane Mitch was the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever observed in the month of October, though it has since been surpassed by Hurricane Wilma of the 2005 season. The hurricane also tied for the fourth most intense Atlantic hurricane in recorded history, but it has since dropped to seventh.

Mitch formed in the western Caribbean Sea on October 22, and after drifting through extremely favorable conditions, it rapidly strengthened to peak at Category 5 status, the highest possible rating on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. After drifting southwestward and weakening, the hurricane hit Honduras as a minimal hurricane. It drifted through Central America, reformed in the Bay of Campeche, and ultimately struck Florida as a strong tropical storm.

Due to its slow motion from October 29 to November 3, Hurricane Mitch dropped historic amounts of rainfall in Honduras and Nicaragua, with unofficial reports of up to 75 inches (1900 mm). Deaths due to catastrophic flooding made it the second deadliest Atlantic hurricane in history; nearly 11,000 people were killed with over 8,000 left missing by the end of 1998. The flooding caused extreme damage, estimated at over $5 billion (1998 USD, $6.5 billion 2008 USD).

37,000 may need to be rescued after Hurricane Ike

Texas already has asked for help, and the active-duty military has 42 search-and-rescue helicopters on standby, the official said.

Meanwhile, the Coast Guard and Air Force were unable to rescue 22 people aboard a freighter adrift in the Gulf of Mexico because of weather, the two military branches said Friday.

"Weather on scene deteriorated to a point that made the rescue impossible," the Coast Guard said in a statement issued Friday. First Lt. Lauren Johnson, an Air Force spokeswoman, confirmed the report. Aircraft were used in the effort, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Coast Guard said.

Hurricane Mitch simply rained and rained as it staggered about the Gulf of Mexico. Like Ike, it left a trail of death and destruction. Floods and mudslides can and are very deadly. One interesting feature of all the 2005 hurricanes was how they ran out of moisture very rapidly. The drought that had hammered the entire southern tier of the USA was like a very dry sponge. Nearly all the rain was sucked out of the storms even when the storms were category 5 ones like Rita.

The high stratosphere volcanic ash this year seems to have dampened the heat considerably. But it also creates big, heavy raindrops and torrential downpours. I have had many such storms this summer, for example. Several inches of rain in less than an hour is not normal for the temperate zone where I live. Europe has had some very severe floods this year, floods that killed people. So we are now seeing this playing itself out with this year's hurricanes: these are wet, wet, wet storms. And the possible storm surge of over 22' is just amazing.

On top of all this, we are also at a full moon tonight. This increases the fury of the tidal flows. The hurricane is blowing ashore right when the full moon is causing the ocean to bulge towards the moon. This is why this particular hurricane has greater potency.

Dire Warning as Hurricane Ike Nears Texas

Thousands fled the island earlier in the day in private cars or on government-chartered buses, but a few diehards insisted they would stay in their homes. One was Denise Scurry, a 46-year-old pool hall employee who was sitting on a milk crate Thursday afternoon in downtown Galveston near her two-story home, reading “Thugs and the Women Who Love Them” and sipping brandy.

“It ain’t going to be nothing but wind and rain,” she said. “Everybody’s all excited about nothing.”

Larry Drosnes, who lives a half-mile from the beach, drove his black Ford Ranger to an elevated parking garage for safekeeping, and then returned to his house.

“The people that left are prudent, and those that are staying are reckless,” said Mr. Drosnes, 61, who has ridden out nearly every storm that has hit the island since 1948. “It’s pretty obvious which category I am in.”

Already we can see from videos made this afternoon, the entire island of Galveston is underwater already. Now, night has fallen and it is one dark, dark night. Time to go back to the past:

Galveston hurricane of 1900

At the time of the 1900 storm the highest point in the city of Galveston was only 8.7 ft (2.7 m) above sea level.[7] The hurricane had brought with it a storm surge of over 15 ft (4.6 m),[16] which washed over the entire island. The surge knocked buildings off their foundations and the surf pounded them to pieces. Over 3,600 homes were destroyed[16] and a wall of debris faced the ocean.[17] The few buildings which survived, mostly solidly-built mansions and houses along the Strand District, are today maintained as tourist attractions.

The highest measured wind speed was 100 mph (160 km/h) just after 6 p.m., but the Weather Bureau’s anemometer was blown off the building shortly after that measurement was recorded.[7] The eye passed over the city around 8 p.m. Maximum winds were estimated at 120 mph (190 km/h) at the time, though later estimates placed the hurricane at the higher Category 4 classification on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.[18] The lowest recorded barometric pressure was 28.48 inHg (964.4 mbar), considered at the time to be so low as to be obviously in error.[2] Modern estimates later placed the storm’s central pressure at 27.49 inHg (930.9 mbar), but this was subsequently adjusted to the storm's official lowest measured central pressure of 27.63 inHg (936 mbar).[19]

This storm has only 110 mph winds which is still very, very dangerous. I have experienced such winds and it screams as it tears at everything. Unlike Rita and Wilma which were stronger wind storms, Ike is taking its time as it moves about. 3 hours of 130 mph are not as destructive as 10 hours of 110 mph wind. And if this is accompanied by a massive storm surge, that is extremely destructive. It baffles me, why people are allowed to build in obviously stupid places. Like right on top of huge fault lines that inevitably will blow out, massively like the San Andreas and all those other fault lines in California.

Sand spits are terrible places to build housing. If people insist on it, they should sign a social contract that forces them to fend for themselves when the inevitable storm comes along and wipes them out. If we set up systems to protect people doing immensely stupid things, they will do these stupid things over and over again.

Click here for the storm damage map of 1900.

All the housing facing the Gulf of Mexico was totally and completely pulverized. Most everyone in these houses, died or were injured. So, is it forbidden to build houses right along the ocean front right where this destruction happened in 1900?

Note how the entire width of the sand spit is squared off and developed! An army of very foolish people parked their homes right smack dab where all those people were swept away! And look at how narrow this sand spit is! Long Island's shoreline is equally unstable and dangerous. I used to live in Coney Island and watched the Atlantic Ocean relentlessly eating away the beaches there. One girlfriend of mine was woken up in a winter storm, hearing beams smashing down her front door that faced the ocean! The fire department had to carry her out of the top story window and it was very dangerous. She lost everything except for the clothes on her back and her two dogs.

Her house was over 100 years old and was built on the sand when the ocean waves were crashing a good 500 yards away. Over the years, erosion and the rising oceans due to global warming, ate up the beach until it was only 10 yards away. Now, the second block in of Sea Gate is being menaced by ocean storms.

This satellite photo clearly shows how utterly stupid Galveston is! Look at the large bodies of water on the landward side of Galveston! This is no towering spit of land with beaches! This is not Long Island. This is a flat sand jetty that is incapable of coping with rising seas! Building sea walls is useless if the ocean simply goes AROUND them and submerges the island. Eventually, the raging seas will submerge this island totally just as the rising ocean is destroying all those small Pacific and Southeast Asian island communities.

Here is the list of the worst hurricanes of the last 100 years. Ike is already on this list. This, in a year which is cooler than the year that spawned three of the other giants on this list. Katrina, Rita and Wilma are still a dominating trio of old sea hags.

Our playgrounds and happy time places tend to be where disasters are most likely. Around volcanoes, on shores prone to tsunamis and hurricanes as well as the usual earthquakes. It is OK to play in such places. But to build permanent housing is a whole other matter.

I will note here that all the places swept by the Boxing Day Tsunami are back in business and filled with eager tourists! Go figure.

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Fine Veil Of Volcanic Dust Affects Weather Dynamics

Sept. 1, 2008
Labor Day

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Hurricane Gustav didn't reach Katrina proportions. But the levees still flooded. This has been a year of floods. We had nonstop rains up here for nearly two months, for example. Mega storm systems are forming all over the place but are not producing great winds. But certainly, are making lots of rain. This is a dual effect of global warming interfacing with high stratospheric volcanic ash. Weather is a very complex, dynamic system on this particular planet.

First, a story I wrote approximately one year ago discusses this high stratospheric gas and particulate volcanic dust:

September 7, 2007: High Volcanic Dust And Hurricane News

Summer up here in the Northeastern US which is almost always under the Jet Stream has been quite cool and even downright cold on my small mountain. We have even had frost warnings in August! I have noticed for a while an increasing amount of fine white volcanic ash in the high statosphere so yesterday, being a fully wind from the north jet stream day, I took photos at sunset showing this effect. Namely, the winter will be hard up here as this fine dust produces snow because it attracts moisture as it slowly filters down.

*snip* My parents wrote one of the first books about how volcanic dust can change the statosphere's light effects. The scattering of the light by fine volcanic dust means the whole heaven is evenly lit by any light source. Normally, when the wind blows from the Arctic, it is pure and clean. When the wind here blows from the south, it is filthy with pollution in summer. Pollution usually doesn't make it to the higher levels of the stratosphere which is why sunsets are redder than sunrises. All day long, human and animal activities raise dust and other particulates on the lower levels so when the sun shines through all this, all but the red lights are blocked out.

But when volcanoes pump fine pumic dust into the higher levels, this spreads out and can be seen at all hours of day or night. Last night, to test this out, I went out at 2am and looked up. The moon is exactly at half full yet the landscape around me was very lit up. I could see perfectly well because of the fine, white light that was universal. Only the very brightest stars could be seen. This white veil of light is a characteristic of volcanic eruptions.

We had a snowy winter right after writing that story. It may even be a super-snow winter this year. China, last winter, had epic snow and ice storms. This caused tremendous damage. Indeed, China has been hit by a number of big earthquakes like the one this week. It seems, the lithosphere has definitely shifted downwards in Sichuan province. I suspect this is distantly related to the huge jump the seabed alongside Sumatra two years ago.

As global warming melts the glaciers, this releases tremendous amounts of locked-up water coupled with the release of these massive weights on the continental land masses and they spring upwards, feeding even more earthquakes. This last week, Vancouver Island had a banging big series of quakes. The entire West Coast of the US is shuddering and moving. The San Andreas has one locked section running from west of LA to the center of the state and we know this will be rearranged in a microsecond. This looming event clearly shows us what to expect as we watch China's landscape respond to all these mega-forces.

The sun is showing no sunspot activity. My father surmised last year that this would happen. This is due to the sun going through its periodic 'shut downs' of the magnetic flows from the core. This leads to cooler weather as we shall see. But the ice on the extreme areas on earth are still melting. This contrary-wise action is due to changes in the earth's atmospheric chemical configuration. McCain just chose a woman from Alaska who believes in magic forces [much more about HER later!]. She thinks changing the chemistry of the planet has no effects. A total fool.

The effects do interact with other forces which is why weather is one of the most complex things one can study. Powerful computers can barely peer into the near future because of this complexity. Forget, figuring out 5 days in advance. The planet, unlike others, also has the living elements that have utterly overwhelmed the 'natural' forces we see on say, Jupiter. Thanks to living things, the atmosphere's chemical composition is very 'queer'. And getting 'queerer' thanks to human beings.

Let's again visit the 'magic' side here:

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This is beyond the pale, one of James Dobson's cronies asking their minions to pray for rain on August 28, the day of Obama's acceptance speech at Invesco stadium, not just rain, torrential rain.

The Goddesses do love it when foolish humans pray to the Invisible Gods for weather changes. As if anyone can petition Mother Nature in this regard! She follows her own wishes and doesn't give a damn about anyone making requests. People are amused that a major storm has disrupted the Republican Convention after Dobson pleaded with his demonic god to intercede and do ill to others. We know for certain, Dobson was begging for lightning bolts.

He is also a fool: he talks endlessly about exactly how much and how little this demonic storm is supposed to act. Not too big and not too small. I remember Pat Robertson. I nearly sued him in Federal Court for damages. I actually talked to a lawyer about this. Back in the 1980's, a hurricane was moving up the East Coast. He prayed it would hit someone else. So the hurricane came to MY house and the eye passed over MY house and we had significant damage to MY house. After this hurricane messed up my home, Robertson went on TV and boasted that his demon and he did it to me.

Har. More about all this later today as we talk about magic, politics and seeing the future.

Hurricane comes ashore:

(CNN) -- Hurricane-force winds slammed into oil terminals around Port Fourchon, southwest of New Orleans, as the eye of Category 2 Gustav was churning just off the Gulf shore Monday morning, according to radar.

The eye of Hurricane Gustav made landfall near Cocodrie, Louisiana, about 10:30 a.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center said.

According to forecasts, Gustav -- which was downgraded to a Category 2 hurricane when its winds weakened to 110 mph (177 kph) Monday morning -- is expected to skim New Orleans, which is still recovering from 2005's Hurricane Katrina.

Port Fourchon is packed with oil terminals and distribution facilities. It is the terminal for tankers bringing oil to the United States from overseas. The U.S. Department of Energy says 56 percent of the imported and Gulf of Mexico oil entering the United States passes this point.

When Katrina, Rita and Wilma all slammed into the Gulf states, there was virtually no volcanic dust in the high stratosphere. So they gained energy, not lost it. Gustav is not all-powerful thanks to this veil covering the earth. But it has astonishing amounts of rain.

Gustav, near landfall, could park over northeast Texas

CNN) -- As Hurricane Gustav neared Louisiana's coast Monday morning, forecasters warned the storm could stall over Louisiana and northeast Texas for several days, which would "exacerbate the threat of heavy rains and inland flooding."
*snip*
The latest discussion published by NHC forecasters said computer models show "Gustav or its remnants slowing to a crawl" over northeast Texas over the next three to five days.

"Such slow motion would exacerbate the threat of heavy rains and inland flooding," the forecasters said.

No kidding! The rain from Katrina was particularly bad for the Mississippi river's residents because it blew straight up the Mississippi valley and tore through my own mountain landscape, dumping lots of rain. Much of this rain that fell across America fell in the water basin of the Mississippi River. So a heroic amount of water came pouring down to poor New Orleans. The damage from the passage of the hurricane the first day was nothing compared to the huge body of water that moved in the next day and the day after, day after day as all the storm's floods moved towards New Orleans.

The present hurricane isn't doing this. It is moving west. If it stalls, anything can happen. Certainly, Texas must brace not for high winds but terrible floods. Hurricane Mitchell got stuck over Honduras and killed tens of thousands from the endless floods and mudslides. A stationary hurricane that turns into a tropical storm can be every bit as deadly as a more compact, higher-wind, faster moving hurricane.

Army helps in India as South Asia reels under floods

(Reuters) - The Indian army and navy stepped up efforts on Monday to rescue hundreds of thousands of people marooned by floods, while rising river levels also rang alarm bells in neighbouring Bangladesh.

In India's impoverished eastern state of Bihar, villagers have been living on rooftops for days, while others are eating plants and leaves after exhausting food stocks.

Aid agencies said the Bihar government should have done more to anticipate the disaster and plan relief operations in a region hit by monsoon flooding every year.

This is a prime example: the winds are being clipped by lack of solar feedback due to the fine veil of dust. But this same dust makes for big, fat rain drops, for example. All summer long, I marveled as to how the rain came down in huge drops or like a fire hose. Splat city.

Mekong carries the runoff from China's superpower status

Some Thais hit by the floods, as well as non-governmental organisations campaigning against dam building, say that water released from the reservoirs of three big Chinese dams on the upper reaches of the Mekong swelled the runoff from a tropical storm and heavy monsoon rain across northern Laos and China's southern Yunnan Province early last month.

But the Mekong River Commission, in a statement last week, pointed out that the volume of releasable water held by the three Chinese hydro-power dams to generate electricity was too small to have been a significant factor in the flooding. The commission, established by the governments of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam in 1995 at the end of a long period of conflict in the region, helps to coordinate management of the Mekong Basin in South-East Asia.

Mega-storms are difficult for dam operators. The best dam system is one fed by slowly melting glaciers and annual snow storms like in the Sierra mountains in the Western USA. Fast melting coupled with massive floods is a bad thing, all around. But since most humans grab onto the concept of looking only at the thermometer instead of the dynamic interplay of all systems.

China is blamed for floods:

While this may be true, Chinese dam construction on the upper reaches of the Mekong is a legitimate source of concern for downstream South-East Asian countries. To generate electricity, water has to be released to drive the turbines.

Their worry is that too much will be released in the wet season, contributing to flooding, and too little in the dry season, when the water is needed in South-East Asia.

This concern will be accentuated when China completes the fourth dam on its section of the Mekong by 2013.

This dam at Xiaowan will be 292m high, one of the world's tallest. It will generate over 4000 megawatts of electricity, the equivalent output of at least four nuclear power stations.

Eventually, the Mekong will be like the Colorado: a trickle at the final end going into the ocean. Humans are changing all sorts of systems and water is a major, major system. Along with the chemistry of the atmosphere.

I had to wait a whole month for the North Wind to bring 'clear skies' so I could take some photos of the stratosphere. All these pictures were taken well after the sun set. The limpid, lucid evenings we have been having this year are due 100% to this high veil of volcanic dust. The brilliance of the evenings is startling, quite frankly. At night, the dimmer stars are masked and the Milky Way is more difficult to see the details of the dust lanes, etc.

Like last year, Fall is early. The birds are troubled by this and most have migrated already from our mountain, the goldfinches, for example. Trees started turning red last week. It is most startling. They aren't doing this due to it being very dry, we had a very, very wet summer! I suspect the veil is blocking various elements of the sun's spectrum. The parts that are missing are triggering this 'early fall' response. Trees don't use a calendar to figure when winter is coming. They rely on the data coming in from all those tiny little cells that fill the leaves which are really scaffolding for these migratory creatures. When they aren't harvesting enough solar energy to multiply or to feed the main body of the tree, they go into hibernation and the juices all begin flowing into the root system. This is why, in spring, we can tap maples for syrup as the same rich, sweet fluids flow into a new scaffolding system which we call 'leaves'.

And see how, at the end of August, it looks like late September here! Various varieties of bushes and trees are dimpling the landscape with yellow and red already. This is going to be one interesting winter, that I am certain.

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Remembering Katrina From Three Years Ago

August 30, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Continuing with remembering Katrina which happened a mere 3 years ago. There are still people who are 'homeless' after that huge storm wiped out much of New Orleans. The behavior of our emperor and his entire entourage was extremely racist and vicious. They didn't even try to pretend to give a hoot about the teeming masses of the poor who couldn't escape that death trap.

Click here to access my archives for the month of very bad hurricanes and extremely bad US GOP leadership during these great storms.

Here are some clippings from my archives which show clearly what was going on back then. There was NO EXCUSE for any of the gross negligence, incompetence and infantility shown during an entire month of slow-motion disasters. Note how the media protects McCain, for example, who was a cruel and useless man while thousands were drowning or sitting on roofs. He and Bush celebrated his stupid birthday! And he wants to lead America.

Dual citizen alien Chertoff is STILL head of the grossly misnamed 'Homeland Security' and he is about the closest thing we have to an invisible man except he is competing with Cheney for that coveted title. Letting these sorts of creatures run our empire is just plain stupid. The media touts McCain as an 'experienced' guy but so far, all I see is someone who can't give one hoot about millions losing their homes. Perhaps he imagines they can all jet off to various other homes, too many to count.

Right. This is what America wants? How insane is this? Well, maybe the gods will keep punishing us until we finally screw our heads back on straighter.

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Gustav Is Becoming Very Dangerous Hurricane

August 29, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Short memories for most people but it has been exactly ONLY 3 years since Katrina led a group of very destructive hurricanes ashore. Today, we learn that Gustav will probably go into super-warm waters that can change a category 1 hurricane into a mega-category 5 in less than 24 hours. This is aimed straight at New Orleans yet again. Time to look at hurricanes and remember past storms and the feeble, disgusting, obnoxious behavior of our rulers in 2005.

Gustav headed for current that fuels big storms

The difference between a monster and a wimp for Gulf of Mexico hurricanes often comes down to a small patch of warm deep water that's easy to miss. It's called the Loop Current, and hurricane trackers say Gustav is headed right for it, reminiscent of Katrina.
*snip*
The meandering Loop Current, located in the southeastern gulf, provides loads of hurricane fuel. It was a key stopover for nearly all the Gulf Coast killers of the past, including Katrina and Camille, said Florida International University professor Hugh Willoughby, former director of the government's hurricane research division.
*snip*
In the last several years, meteorologists have focused more attention on the Loop Current, which is only a couple of hundred miles long and not even 100 miles wide. The evidence linking it to the worst storms is beyond circumstantial, Shay said.

What's crucial is the depth of warm water in the current — several hundred feet — because it provides continuous high-octane fuel for a storm. Hurricanes use the heat from the water to grow stronger and in the process they churn up cooler water from below, which then slows or stops the feeding process. But in the Loop Current, the deeper water is also warm and it further feeds the storm.

New Orleans isn't the only problem. Yes it and the facilities around it are a major US port. And directly in the path of this storm that will probably become very big indeed, lie many offshore oil rigs. The news today echoes the news from the end of September, 2005. Let's hope this echo doesn't become an exact reproduction.

First, here is an old story from 1900 when Galveston was utterly destroyed by a hurricane following the exact same path Gustav seems to be taking:

New York Times, September 9, 1900:

Here is the probable plot of the storm in 1900:

Here is a You Tube news story about the orphans who drowned in that huge hurricane:

Exactly 3 years ago, I started the last week of August with a story about how stupid, disgusting, peevish, childish and all around infantile our major media reporters were acting while visiting Bush. It was totally inappropriate because Bush announced just the day before, he had no time to spare to meet families of dead soldiers. Seriously, this article should be read to get a view of just how unsuitable and infantile our media guys are under normal circumstances.

AUGUST 27, 2005

PRESS POOL PARTY DUDES

From Editor and Publisher:
More than four dozen members of the press corps accepted an invitation to a barbeque at the Bush ranch in Texas last night, even though it was off-the-record and they had to ride a bus past the Cindy Sheehan-led antiwar camp site.

The party was pool side, though no one stripped and swam. The president wore jeans and served Texas beer.

Well, according to my secret photo you can see above, they did swim and they did strip! This is why they were sworn to secrecy. Like in a typical Skull and Bones bash, they had to worship the Devil of Death and dance around naked. Sounds like a typical Bohemia Club party, for that matter.

When the wunderkinder of the press were splashing each other and giggling in Crawford, death was sharpening his scythe in the Gulf. The Bush gang determinedly tried their damnedest to be as clueless as possible. This comes naturally to them. No effort at all. Ditto McCain as we shall see later.

AUGUST 28, 2005

HURRICANE MARTI GRAS

As this storm approached Florida, there was little worry and then, as is characteristic of all large storms these days, it dumped a great deal of rain on people and killed some of them too. The blase attitude exhibited by the authorities is due entirely to them wanting to believe that global warming isn't happening and one of the chief effects of this is a hyper concentration of moisture in the oddest places as well as powerful hurricanes.
*snip*
New Orleans is the latest place in the Eye of the Storm. Last year, when one killer hurricane after another struck Florida and the Gulf coast, each storm slid past New Orleans. The one that nearly hit, they evacuated the city...except for the poor and the elderly who have no trasportation and no where to go. The mayor refused to house them and they survived that death trap only because the dice were rolled and the number was seven, not snake eyes.

Many people yelled at the mayor for this and this time, with only hours to go, they are reluctantly opening the stadium to the people. But evacuating the homebound has to be done door to door. I wonder if this is happening. I hope they help the elderly and ill and disabled.

I'll be frank here: as I reread all of my old stories from the following 30 days of pure hell, tears came to my eyes. Seeing it in the raw, as it was happening, is physically painful. Unlike Bush, Condi, John McCain or the others like Chertoff, etc, I felt for the victims even before the hurricane slammed into New Orleans. I clearly remember how at the last minute, the stadium was reluctantly opened to the masses of people who would have died, otherwise. I remember how horrified I was, the National Guard was NOT there. Was NOT evacuating hospitals and nursing homes. They were in Iraq.

Like on 9/11, another epic moment of total irresponsibility and downright criminal activity, Bush and his gang should have been arrested on the spot. They were not. They should have been charged with treason. They were let free. The media and the political money bag lobbyists all rushed into rescue these monsters. But anyone reading my old news service can plainly see, these people were pure traitors. Arrest them all. Including McCain.

AUGUST 30, 2005

NO REAL HOMELAND SECURITY

The great hurricane is past but far from done. As flooding and general mayhem continues, the parts already hit wake up in a daze. There was a similar event back in the 1920s: the Great Flood. The Mississippi overflowed its banks and many people were stranded on high ground without food or water. And the Republican controlled government at first, sat idle....sounds familiar?
*snip*
Relief efforts required a lot of manual labor. As we can see now, flood and hurricane messes are worse than earthquakes because the water rots the standing housing base as well as the mud fills the remaining houses and is very difficult to move and you can't just bulldoze the houses down if there is lots of mud in them, for example, and shoveling them out is all hand labor.

This is why we had the National Guard. Already, people are nervously wondering what happened to them. So far, about 5,000 of them have appeared in three states to deal with this mess. To clean up just the roadbeds of debrie in about 500 costal communities and one major city, this is what? Ten guards per town? Eh? Cleaning up New Orleans which should take only two weeks if enough Guards were available would require about 15,000 National Guards minimum!

August 30. 2005:THE BIG BLOW

Unlike the previous hurricane where the media studiously ignored spectacular pictures of oil drilling rig failures, this time they couldn't stop the photo showing this huge rig wedged under a high bridge.

All the oil dealers saw it and went crazy and now the price of oil is way way up and it is going to climb and climb because transportation of all sorts is dead in the water in the Mississippi lowlands and this means no oil or gas production, PERIOD.

The reverberations from this will be immense this winter. We will be short of winter oil and possibly even natural gas!

More: we don't know the status of the oil rigs in the Gulf but this picture shows clearly, we will be lucky if half are useable. The multilevel mess here is hard to minimize. This hurricane struck in the heart of our fuel systems. We have systems in New Jersey and in Texas and in California but guess what?

AUGUST 30, 2005

A HOLE IN THE BUCKET

Part II coming up.

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Many Mississippi Levees Break

June 19, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The great Midwest floods continue as the wall of water from epic rains in the Great Lakes region moves southwards. Many of the animal concentration camps filled with chickens or hogs or dairy cows are now totally underwater. Most of the larger mammals were removed to high ground. But this flood reminds me about the other Great Mississippi flood of 1927 which bankrupted so many farmers back then. Also, we look at corn prices to try to understand inflation. Corn has jumped from about $3 a bushel to $8 a bushel. This feeds back into the inflationary system, of course. But not quite as directly as oil.

Click here for hundreds of pictures of the Midwest Katrina:

Midwest flood claims another levee, total of 23

(Reuters) - The Mississippi River has flowed over the top of a levee north of St. Louis protecting an environmental management area, bringing the total number of compromised levees to 23, said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on Thursday.

The levee, near the convergence of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers, protected about 4,000 acres.

Farm disasters usually aren't noticed much except when they are global in nature or there is some sort of hijinks going on in the financial markets. This year, we have both so it is very obvious to everyone. When the Bread Basket of the US, the Bread Basket of Australia and the Rice Bowl of China all have either terrible, huge floods or droughts in the case of Australia, world food prices go up. Especially when the economies undergoing this are the world's #1 and #3 economies. On top of this, China has nearly a billion people. The need to fix infrastructure from the earthquakes that wrecked Sichuan Province, the terrible winter storms and now, raging floods means higher international food prices as China, holder of the world's biggest FOREX reserves, goes shopping.

The US is deep in debt and competing with China in the food markets because we burn a lot of corn to make energy. People use corn to heat their houses and now, drive the cars. Since much of this is connected with energy prices, this means more inflation at the fundamental levels.

China rushes to fix dams as 9,000 sq miles flooded

(Reuters) - China has posted hundreds of police and rescue officials to shore up dams threatening to burst under torrential rain that has already flooded thousands of square miles of crops and homes.

The rain and floods, concentrated in the southern industrial hub of Guangdong, have killed at least 171 people and left 52 missing since the start of the annual flood season and forecasters have warned of more downpours in coming days.

More than 750 government officials and police had been sent to conduct rescue work for six reservoirs in "danger of bursting" in southern Guangxi region, Xinhua news agency said.

China announced today, they are going to raise the price of energy and state-supported food. The need to relieve inflation by moving it downwards to the classes that are struggling to save money is important: all economic systems right themselves by sucking down savings. It doesn't matter how you save. If you save via investing in anything, it will go down if there is inflation. Then, inflation eats it up. This is the despair of all savers which is why so many humans are 'party today for tomorrow we die.' The ants in the population are always outnumbered by grasshoppers.

Yet all sound banking systems are built upon savers. Ants make capitalism possible. But grasshoppers think only of the consumer side of the ledger which is why all pronouncements about the health of our economy always focus on consumers, never savers. This tension goes back to the beginning of civilization. The earliest city states knew that the central authorities, usually religious magicians, would hold the excess of the previous 7 years of harvest in case of floods, freezes or droughts. This was how 'savings' was born. It requires stern will power to put aside something for the future.

Greenspan and his buddies loved to talk about the 'global savings glut'. They gloated over how to seize this non-consumed wealth. Of course, destroying it via inflation is the oldest method in the books. It goes hand in glove with excess magic money creation by sex-starved gnomes. Heh. The point is, we have lots of dollars floating about and everyone is troubled by problems with farm harvests. The farmers who are not hit by all this will be ecstatic with joy as they get a higher return on their labor. But this won't help them if everything they need to run their farms ends up costing more and more and more thanks to inflation.

From the Canadian Press:

Corn prices reached another record Monday, closing in on US$8 a bushel, as devastating U.S. Midwest floods raised fears of a sharply smaller U.S. corn crop and another spike in world food prices.

Other commodities traded mostly higher, with gold, silver, copper and wheat futures all climbing. Crude oil surged to a record near $140 a barrel and then fell in volatile trading.

Corn prices have shot up 11 per cent in the last week as floodwaters continue to ravage the Midwest, swallowing corn fields just before the crucial growing season. The U.S. government will report June 30 on how many hectares have been lost to flooding, but a survey in Farm Futures magazine estimated that flooding could claim 1.3 million hectares _ or nearly four per cent of the expected crop.

See? Money is looking for some lucrative place to park itself and then 'grow' like weeds in a wet, warm summer. Generally speaking, corn prices go up rapidly when there is growing inflation. It doesn't cause inflation. We have to have this 'perfect storm' situation for it to shoot upwards. Below is a sample as to how this works. The corn growers in Canada track the value of their corn in relation to the rate of inflation. Only very recently, has corn shot up. For much of the last 20 years, it has been fairly stable.

Chart from the Ontario, Canada Corn Producers Association

From the USDA:

Since U.S. ethanol production uses field corn, the most direct impact of increased ethanol production should be on field corn prices and on the price of food products based on field corn. However, even for those products heavily based on field corn, the effect of rising corn prices is dampened by other market factors. For example, an 18-ounce box of corn flakes contains about 12.9 ounces of milled field corn. When field corn is priced at $2.28 per bushel (the 20-year average), the actual value of corn represented in the box of corn flakes is about 3.3 cents (1 bushel = 56 pounds). (The remainder is packaging, processing, advertising, transportation, and other costs.) At $3.40 per bushel, the average price in 2007, the value is about 4.9 cents. The 49-percent increase in corn prices would be expected to raise the price of a box of corn flakes by about 1.6 cents, or 0.5 percent, assuming no other cost increases.
*snip*
Using these ratios and data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a simple pass-through model provides estimates of the expected increase in meat prices given the higher corn prices. The logic of this model is illustrated by an example using chicken prices. Over the past 20 years, the average price of a bushel of corn in the U.S. has been $2.28, implying that a pound of chicken at the retail level uses 8 cents worth of corn, or about 4 percent of the $2.05 average retail price for chicken breasts. Using the average price of corn for 2007 ($3.40 per bushel) and assuming producers do not change their animal-feeding practices, retail chicken prices would rise 5.2 cents, or 2.5 percent. Using the same corn data, retail beef prices would go up 14 cents per pound, or 8.7 percent, while pork prices would rise 13 cents per pound, or 4.1 percent.

The cost of corn for producing meat or eggs is the least of the overhead. Handling and processing as well as caring for sheep, pigs, cows or chickens is quite labor intensive. And since most modern farms have these living indoors, this uses up lots more electricity than in the past. Much of the developing world including China operates on the older system that uses virtually no electricity or oil. But the modern system does. Which is why it takes a one-two punch from both oil and corn going up to fuel lots of price hikes. Then there are the speculators: they are all over this flood news like flies on a dead cow. They increase the bidding wars greatly.

Now for a look backwards to the other great Mississippi flood, the one that devastated the heartlands right before the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929:

From the World Socialist Web: Lessons from the Great Flood of 1927

There are certain parallels between the great flood and Hurricane Katrina. The Mississippi flood of 1927 exposed the class divide in America as well as laid bare grinding class and racial oppression in the South. It also demonstrated the need for the federal government to take charge of managing the Mississippi, which had been previously left to state and local authorities.

The book describes in detail the origins of the ill-conceived “levees only” policy adopted by the US Army Corps of Engineers for controlling the Mississippi. It also examines the career of Senator John Percy of Mississippi, a wealthy plantation owner, whose hometown of Greenville became the focus of an investigation following the flood because of reports of gross mistreatment of black refugees.

Its accounts of the flood itself are compelling. In late August of 1926, massive rains soaked a large portion of the Mississippi watershed, causing widespread flooding. That was, however, only the first of a series of deluges that would eventually push the Mississippi and its tributaries to record flood levels.

This reminds us of Katrina. The will of the government to protect and defend the people of the Delta region was colored by naked racism. Both black and poor white people were left to drown or die in the filth. Even today, with these floods, the national response is rather muted. We are easily distracted. Look at Congress: they are voting yet another $168 billion for the misled war in Iraq. Most of the National Guard that should be saving people, goods and livestock in the Midwest are in Iraq, dying or messing around fruitlessly.

The author cites a 1912 New York Times article that illustrates the serf-like conditions faced by blacks in Mississippi. The Times reported that an engineer overseeing work on a levee threatened by high water ran out of sandbags and “ordered...several hundred negroes...to lie down on top of the levee and as close together as possible. The black men obeyed, and although spray frequently dashed over them, they prevented the overflow that might have developed into an ugly crevasse. For an hour and a half this lasted, until the additional sandbags arrived” (p. 131).

Conditions for the poor—white and black—were abysmal in 1920s Mississippi. A planter listed what he considered the typical items that would have to be replaced for a sharecropper family that had lost everything in the flood: “1 dipper, 1 baking pan, 4 forks, 4 spoons, 1 large spoon...4 joints of stove pipe, 1 elbow for stove pipe, 1 cooking stove...1 suit overalls, 4 pair shoes...two beds and springs.” The cost of these items totaled $77.42. Most flood victims did not even receive that much (p. 371).
*snip*
Barry recounts that when the break on the levee at Mounds Landing first appeared, the National Guard commander in charge forced black levee workers to continue filling sandbags at gunpoint. According to some reports, as many as 200 of these workers drowned when the levee finally gave way.

Anne Moody's 'Coming of Age in Mississippi' is a detailed account about the aftermath of Jim Crow, the flood and the struggle for civil rights. She was one of the famous Woolworth counter sit in members and was abused and beaten very badly during that push to integrate businesses. The extreme poverty she lived in was a tool used by the ruling elites to keep prices low. The lack of inflation was like we see today, namely, if the poor can't stay alive, there is no inflation so long as they quietly starve. This is the painful price of such stability that still generates good profits.

We do not want to return to those days any more than the average Chinese does not want to return to the days of Mao or pre-WWII.

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Speculators, Floods And Food Prices

June 9, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

Global warming is causing flood/drought cycles in the temperate zones. Huge floods ravage the Midwest farmlands as well as Europe and Asia. These are not continuous rain but rather huge thunderstorms that spawn tornadoes and drop hail. All of which are bad for farming. These persistent storms are now increasing inflation forces as crops are destroyed. The debate about global warming is misguided. It is not about the temperature of the air close to the ground, it is the rise in temperature of the higher stratosphere. And the melting of the glaciers in the extreme latitudes are feeding more moisture into the system. These towering summer storms are a testimony to the dynamics of global warming.

Severe weather kills 8; water rises in Indiana

Wicked weekend storms pounded the country from the Midwest to the East Coast, forcing hundreds of people to flee flooded communities, spawning tornadoes that tore up houses and killing at least eight people.

Rescuers in boats continued to pluck people from rising waters in Indiana on Sunday, a day after more than 10 inches of rain deluged much of the state.

In Iowa, pumps and thousands of sandbags were sent to the Iowa City area, where officials fear a reservoir could top a spillway and flood the city of about 63,000 by Tuesday.

The Indiana flooding killed at least one person, a man who drowned in his vehicle about 50 miles south of Indianapolis, said John Erickson, a spokesman for the state Department of Homeland Security. Another person was reported missing after falling off a boat about 30 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

Ten inches of rain is downright tropical. Over the course of my own life, i have noticed there isn't more rain but rather, it comes in huge dumps more and more. This is why looking at basic statistics of annual rainfall conceals the reality of global warming. Ten inches of rain in a month is normal for the temperate zones. Ten inches in several hours or less is terrible. Even more fearful is the potential for huge snow storms in winter. 10" of rain=10' of snow.

Just like the obvious issue of the Hubbert Oil Peak is hard for people to grasp, global warming is difficult. Like with oil, pollution from burning fossil fuels is something we wish to do more and more because frankly, we love doing it. Our desires tell us to keep burning these fuels and the fuels will last forever. Our hearts wish for this so strongly, we will ignore most of the effects of releasing millions and millions of years of toxins and gases all in one century.

Just as people can't believe that the Hubbert Oil Peak is when the most oil is discovered [not the least oil is discovered] so it is with global warming: people think it has to get hotter right where they live. The concept that the warming of the higher stratosphere and the very highest latitudes is what matters, eludes most people. The equatorial zones won't have much in the way of temperature rises, they get more droughts. The polar extremes are the places where the rise in temperature is the greatest. And humans can't really feel this change so easily. We still think it is cold. But it is plainly obvious that these atmospheric changes are melting the glaciers and ice cover of the oceans at both poles. Ergo: there is some sort of global warming going on.

Editorially, I suggest all pollution by all human actions are unsettling for the natural balance. As humans increase in numbers, this imbalance gets worse and worse.

Major flooding: I-70, I-65 closed

Near record flooding led Gov. Mitch Daniels to declare Indiana's second disaster in as many days Saturday after nearly 11 inches of rain fell in parts of the state.

Waters rose rapidly from the Southside of Indianapolis west to Terre Haute and south to Bloomington Saturday morning, cutting roadways and interstates, flooding homes and putting so much pressure on dams the governor ordered one of them breached to ease the situation even though that led to new flooding.
*snip*
Officials already worry that flooding along the White River from Martinsville south could break records. Coming on the heels of a week of storms and tornadoes, the deluge seemed especially cruel. Just Friday, Daniels had issued a disaster declaration for 41 counties. "Mother Nature has landed another one on our chin," Daniels said. Indiana hasn't seen flooding like this for decades, said State Homeland Security Director Joe Wainscott. The National Weather Service said the White and Wabash rivers and some of their tributaries could rise beyond their record peaks, most set in 1913. Creeks and rivers swelled as 10.94 inches of rain fell in Edinburgh, and NWS reported 8 to 10 inches fell in a swath from Terre Haute to Shelbyville.

This isn't the only flood this year.

From March 19th this year, earlier floods:

The City of Evansville and Vanderburgh County Indiana are experiencing what is called a “100 year rain.” As of 10 a.m, Evansville Regional Airport had received a record-breaking 6.52 inches of rain. The single greatest rainfall on record for Evansville was 6.5 inches, set on Oct. 6, 1910. The Ohio River is at 37 feet and rising. It is expected to crest at 43 feet on Monday.

The Water and Sewer Utility had its three vacuum trucks removing water from areas around the City all night long. Crews responded to 147 flood calls; 29 were for storm water in a basement or a home, the remaining 20 were because of sewage backups. A majority of the backups were caused by sump pumps that failed because they couldn’t keep up with the rainfall. This is also a good reminder to check back flow valves to see if they are functioning properly. Back flow valves are required by ordinance to stop the flow of storm water and sanitary water back into homes.

Just 4 months ago, a 7" rain was considered a hundred year flood. Now, we have multiple such floods. Of course, this is fueling inflation. When dire weather hammers the agricultural heartlands, the price of grains and other food stuff rises rapidly.

Corn rises to record with Midwest beset by rain

Corn futures extended their gains into a third session Friday, reaching a record as weather forecasts called for rains in the Midwest, which have already delayed crop development, to continue. Prices of soybeans and wheat also moved up.

"Probably the biggest contributor to the rising prices is the scope of heavy rains that have fallen in the past couple of weeks," said Dale Mohler, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather. Rainfalls have left crop fields saturated, halting the planting of soybeans and delaying corn seeds' development, he said.
Weather reports predicted that excessive Midwestern rain will continue, likely pushing corn and soybeans prices higher. The National Weather Service forecasts above-normal precipitation in the region over the following ten days.

Corn futures for July delivery rose to $6.6325 a bushel in Friday's trading on the Chicago Board of Trade, a new record for the grain's front-month futures contract. It closed up 7.4 cents at $6.506 a bushel.

Since the speculators have half as many 'up' items to play with, they are bidding up food and fuel. Diesel is going up and up and up. I am aghast, I use a lot of diesel. This is going to raise the cost of farming, big time. Most farmers use diesel tractors and such because they run at a lower RPM, cooler engines in the hot sun and are very efficient doing slow, steady hauling or harvesting, for example. Driving at less than 5 mph all day is best done with diesel. So even though grains are rising in value, the profit margin is being squeezed. Also, many farmers who are being hit by the very long drought in Australia or the floods in the Midwest are not reaping any profits at all. They are losing everything.

The Doha rounds come to mind here: the fantasy of the Bilderberg conspirators is to eliminate all supports for all workers especially those pesky peasants who own land and farm. Unlike the footloose city populations, farmers who own land are very tenacious. They also can fuel terrible uprisings if they get motivated enough. This is the difference between nomadism and farmers.

Corn Jumps to Record on U.S. Midwest Rain, Crude Oil, Dollar

Corn jumped to a record on speculation rain in the U.S. Midwest will cut supply and as rising oil costs and the dollar's decline boosted demand for a hedge against inflation. Soybeans, wheat and rice also gained.

Thunderstorms affected areas from the central Plains to the Midwest yesterday, bringing more than four inches (10 centimeters) of rain to parts of Iowa, Massachusetts-based Meteorlogix LLC said in a report. Further storms are forecast for the next five days. Corn and soybeans planted in wet, cool soils develop shallow roots, increasing the threat of damage from dry weather in July and August.

The idle speculators in the big cities place bets on natural events. Sudden deep freezes in the wrong places, droughts, floods, blights: these are all subject to betting wars. Catastrophes for humanity enrich these bettors. The flood of Funny Money™ created by reckless lending always migrates to disasters and makes them much worse. Governments, since the first Pharaohs had to deal with all this. The function of a government was to store excess grain and then give it back out during bad times so speculators couldn't charge an arm and a leg for necessities.

Regulating the markets is an important function. The libertarian fad of 'let the market set the price' can turn into massive riots and outright rebellions if the government stands back and leaves everyone at the mercy of speculators seeking to suck up all the wealth from desperate people who need to stay alive. Sometimes the festering anger from such times can simmer for 100 years. The Irish who were left to starve to death in 1846 couldn't riot against the Crown and its military. Disarmed and far from the Fortress Island of England, they were forced to flee their homelands. But when WWI and WWII came and England desperately needed the Irish to save Her, they said firmly, 'Go die, bitch'.

It pays to take care of the lower classes! It pays to feed them, to care for them! Only a government can do this! Anyone who thinks we can do this with voluntary charity is nuts. For charity collapses exactly when the speculators bid up the price of all necessities.

It is interesting to me that inflation in food always runs alongside sudden price hikes in oil. Oil=food in modern technological systems. I remember the first gas crisis: right on its heels came a food crisis. The government always creates money as fast as possible during wars and especially oil-related wars. And within a year or two, the food system goes down in flames. Here is an older story from the early days of the Hubbert Oil Peak crisis. Namely, when the US hit the Peak first.

Monday, Apr. 22, 1974--- Cropping the Price

Of all the forces driving up U.S. living costs, none has been more powerful than the two-year climb in the prices of American farm goods, which has kicked the nation's food bill to record levels. The prime cause of the boom has been the global demand for American-grown food. More recently, speculators bid up U.S. farm prices higher than even the heavy press of foreign orders warranted. Now, however, American consumers are getting the first signals that the worst is over. Since late February, prices on the Chicago Board of Trade and other commodities markets have been falling along a broad range.

Contracts for July delivery of wheat, which sold in February for as much as $5.85 a bushel, are now down to about $4.10. Corn has dropped from $3.50 a bushel to $2.55; and soybeans have fallen from $9.03 to $5.35.

A major reason for the price decline was that speculative fever began to cool as optimistic crop reports began rolling in. Rumors that the Arabs were about to lift their oil embargo against the U.S. also eased fears of uncontrollable inflation. The present prices, however, are still far higher than a year ago, and few experts are predicting any further substantial drop until the dimensions of this year's harvest are clearer, both in the U.S. and abroad. Rising costs of farm labor, fertilizer and machinery will also work against a further price drop.

In 1973, farm products shot up in price. I remember that well, I had my first child. Buying food was difficult. In Tucson, I had my own chickens, rabbits and gardens. But I moved to NYC and was suddenly hit by these high prices. Note the price of wheat! Only slightly less than 1974 for wheat and corn was half of what it is today at the present high peak. Since inflation was much greater than the differential, the price of corn is about the same as during that earlier spike. Also, look at the price of soybeans back then! This feeds livestock as well as other industrial uses. It is similar to oil in some functions. It shot way up there!

This was rightfully considered to be a national catastrophe. Since most farmers sell their FUTURE harvest to speculators, they usually do not get much benefit from soybeans doubling in price. The extra profits are made by the people who give money to the farmers. Over the years, this has grown into a serious problem. For it is laughably easy up until this year for speculators to get LOANS and use this to buy FUTURES. This is why nearly all commodities are shooting up! The speculators bet that things will go BAD and everyone will have to pay DOUBLE for necessities and raw materials! Since certain national central banks have been pushing the concept of 0% lending, the flood of this sort of money has landed directly on everything we need to survive. This way, we can't escape the speculators who need to see higher and higher returns because even though the lending is super-cheap, they are grossly overextended. So they need high profit margins to keep the ball rolling.

Study: S.D. land prices soar

A South Dakota State University report says the average value of South Dakota's agricultural land in February was 22.5% higher than a year earlier.

An economist says most of the people who participated in the survey agreed the increases are directly related to booming markets for corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops. The economist says higher prices for corn, wheat and soybeans have boosted farm income, putting pressure on ag land values and rental rates.

The study says cropland value and cash rental rates are the highest they've been in the nearly two decades that SDSU researchers have tracked ag real estate.

The last two major oil price spikes created the exact same hike in farm prices. If a farmer wants to give up and join the nomadic hordes in the cities, he or she can get a lot of money before giving up on farming forever. This process has been going on for the last 200 years. Every year, there are fewer farmers. Just like in ancient Rome, ancient Egypt or ancient Mesopotamia and China, the lands are increasingly held by financiers, government officials or other organized hyper-powers. Huge estates operated by slaves or near-slaves who don't own hardly anything, not a house nor cow, swell in size as the cities fill up with excess population.

It is very simple: the farmers like to lease other plots or buy them piecemeal. But they can't even begin to compete in the bidding for land if the speculators and officials want these lands. But absentee landlordism is pure evil! Our Founding Fathers struggled with this. The Free North believed in '40 acres and a mule' while the slave South wanted absentee landlords who live in the cities off of the profits of slaves toiling in the sun. This was a very big crisis for the US. The slave South lost their bid to continue this system and the farmer-landholder system expanded rapidly. A strong, FREE farming base is the backbone of democracy.

Just for example, whenever we have an election, I hear lots of city people yelling, if they supported the losing side, 'I'm LEAVING. Go to hell!' But farmers, accustomed to battling the weather, disease and knowing every inch of their farmland is watered by their sweat and blood. They would DIE before being uprooted. Grimly, they fight on! This is why urban uprisings are relatively easy to suppress. Peasant uprisings are nearly impossible to stop.

Here is a Time magazine article from last summer:

Global Warming's Next Victim: Wheat

We're used to watching the price of oil mock gravity, but there's an even more essential commodity that's also become scarcer and pricier in recent months: Traders are paying record prices for wheat on world markets, thanks in part to shortages caused by a mix of drought and flooding. Canada, the second-biggest wheat producer after the U.S., looks set to harvest its smallest crop in five years, due to an unusually dry July, while production in the European Union may be down nearly 40% from last year after flooding rains followed long droughts. Growing global demand for biofuels is also eating up grain production, and boosting prices.
*snip*
Lobell says global warming has already begun to take food off the world's table. According to a recent study he and his colleagues conducted, the temperature increase that occurred between 1981 and 2002 reduced major cereal crop yields by an annual average of 40 million metric tons — losses worth $5 billion a year. Those losses are sobering, but nothing compared to what might be in store: A recent study sponsored by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research forecast a 51% decline in India's wheat-growing land, potentially leaving hundreds of millions hungry. And, last week, China's top meteorological official warned that global warming could cut the nation's grain harvest by 5 to 10% by 2030. And all this will be happening while both countries add more mouths to feed.

Reading today's news while remembering yesterday's news: the head of the United Nations called for a 50% hike in farm output. This bizarre demand flies in the face of reality. We have a Hubbert's Food Peak: the earth can produce only so much food. Either the population shrinks to fit this fact or we have a mass die off. In Nature, when any animals are too many, they strip the land of their food and then have a fast die off. Hubbert Oil Peak people know this and foresee this happening to humanity if we continue to overpopulate the earth, driving all systems into instability and shortages.

The Bilderberg group started up due to fears about this. This secretive, nasty group of elites pull to their bosoms anyone who hacks their way uphill to seats of power. Then they are shown the Truth, the Real Future. And either they join the conspiracy to eliminate 3/4ths of all humans or they die, themselves. Note that these people do NOT invite Jimmy Carter to their coven's little meetings! Nope. He, like myself, is locked outside. He is the only one who took the Hubbert Oil Peak seriously. He is the only one [and now al Gore] who tried to alert the public about these matters. Al Gore is now tolerated, since he has no power anymore, because he has joined the speculators and hell hounds. His solution to all this is to create a new monetary black hole, the carbon swap markets. Speculators love this! And are very, very happy as they use this as a platform to create infinite Funny Money™. Now that we have the Japanese carry trade back, this machine will turn the present high inflation into hyper-hyper inflation.

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McCain Sang Happy Birthday to Me While Thousands Drowned

April 24, 2008

Elaine Meinel Supkis

The news today is, the Village Idiot, Mr. Senile McCain attacked BUSH about Hurricane Katrina. But those of us who have memories of that horrible storm remember very clearly that McCain had Bush visit him during the hurricane. And they celebrated this jerk's stupid birthday. And during this, they AND THE DAMN PRESS pretended this was funny as hell. And no one then asked either lunatic about the many hundreds and hundreds of people who were drowning in New Orleans and bloggers like myself were screaming ourselves hoarse. Arrest McCain. Put him in an insane asylum.

McCain, in New Orleans, Says Katrina Response `Disgraceful'

John McCain toured a New Orleans neighborhood still reeling from Hurricane Katrina and issued a new and scathing critique of the ``terrible and disgraceful'' failure of the Bush administration's response to the disaster.

McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said that had he been president he would have immediately visited the area after the storm hit in August 2005. While he's been critical of the administration's Katrina response before, the Arizona senator's remarks today were some of the sharpest he's used.

``Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in this terrible and disgraceful manner,'' McCain said after a walking tour of the Lower Ninth Ward, a predominantly black neighborhood that was devastated by Katrina. ``History will judge this president,'' he said. ``This was an unacceptable scenario.'

This news is the bottom of the barrel. Both McCain and the clueless, stupid idiots pretending to be 'reporters' all flubbed today's story. On the internet, people who know how to use search engines can clearly see the truth. Why does our media act this way? HAHAHA. They are always this stupid. Every once and a while, the mainstream media owners must be saying, 'Oh, oh, we better put out some real news or even idiots will figure out we are a bunch of lying bastards!' But today isn't one of those days.

So time to go back to the early days of my bloghood: I was on top of Hurricane Katrina news from when it was still a tropical storm. And I demanded to know why the National Guard was wallowed in Iraq. I remember Iraq, too. This week, over a dozen soldiers were blown up for no good reason. The death toll is now a daily 3-5 poor souls. Not that the media notices THAT, either.

Since Katrina has reared her ugly head in the news and because Bush and his minions and fellow criminals like Chertoff who should be deported, it is time to review what happened in the past and what these criminal people did, their attitude, their words, their lack of deeds!

Hurricane Marti GrasI talk about not only the hurricane but the lacksidasical attitude of all the officials who aren't taking it serioiusly, seemingly, since no body is evacuating New Orleans. People are beginning to escape. This is Aug. 28th.

If you click here, the entire month's worth of stories shows up from August, 2005.

What even the top bloggers have forgotten, all riled up over senile McCain forgetting he and Bush spent Katrina's destruction, singing 'Happy Birthday' is this wretched little story that happened the day after:

a href="http://culturelifemedia.blogspot.com/2005/08/press-pool-party-dudes.html">August 27, 2005:

Bush throws a fun pool party right after Katrina and while people in New Orleans were still dying without ANY rescue or help.

Bush had no time to spare to talk to Cindy Sheehan or anyone really important to America but he obviously has plenty of time for throwing parties. From Editor and Publisher:
More than four dozen members of the press corps accepted an invitation to a barbeque at the Bush ranch in Texas last night, even though it was off-the-record and they had to ride a bus past the Cindy Sheehan-led antiwar camp site.

The party was pool side, though no one stripped and swam. The president wore jeans and served Texas beer.

Well, according to my secret photo you can see above, they did swim and they did strip! This is why they were sworn to secrecy. Like in a typical Skull and Bones bash, they had to worship the Devil of Death and dance around naked. Sounds like a typical Bohemia Club party, for that matter.

This is so stupid. The press poodles knew perfectly well, what they were doing back then: having a blast while ignoring the real news. This wretched condition of our media is deliberate. Anyone who does seek 'news' and then reports it is fired! So they continue lying and lying. As our political leaders lie. This life of fabrication kills people. Look at Iraq! And when more horrible natural acts happen, expect the same stupid response.

And we will have more. The 9 mag earthquake that is just waiting to spring in California is another opportunity for this sort of mindlessness. Not to mention, more hurricanes.

Here is my news from August 29, 2005:

From the AP: Heavily armed state policemen stood watch Thursday as tense, exhausted and angry crowds struggled onto buses that would deliver them from the miserable conditions of the Superdome.

As buses were being loaded for the trip to the Houston Astrodome, a crowd broke through a line of National Guardsmen and rushed the glass doors into the Hyatt Regency complex that adjoins the Superdome.

They were stopped by 19 heavily armed state policemen -- one had an AR15 rifle and another a 12-gauge shotgun -- all in Kevlar vests.

State police officer K.W. Miller told a reporter, ''You better move to the back. This is ready to break. We've been here since 6 a.m. and this is getting worse and worse.''

August 30, 2005:

The great hurricane is past but far from done. As flooding and general mayhem continues, the parts already hit wake up in a daze. There was a similar event back in the 1920s: the Great Flood. The Mississippi overflowed its banks and many people were stranded on high ground without food or water. And the Republican controlled government at first, sat idle....sounds familiar?
*anip*
Relief efforts required a lot of manual labor. As we can see now, flood and hurricane messes are worse than earthquakes because the water rots the standing housing base as well as the mud fills the remaining houses and is very difficult to move and you can't just bulldoze the houses down if there is lots of mud in them, for example, and shoveling them out is all hand labor.

This is why we had the National Guard. Already, people are nervously wondering what happened to them. So far, about 5,000 of them have appeared in three states to deal with this mess. To clean up just the roadbeds of debrie in about 500 costal communities and one major city, this is what? Ten guards per town? Eh? Cleaning up New Orleans which should take only two weeks if enough Guards were available would require about 15,000 National Guards minimum!

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From August 30, 2005, I hand out the Marie Antoinettes awards to the GOP top ranks and the Bush family:

They can't keep their mouths shut. One after another, the people in charge of our increasingly messed up nation have to shove it in our faces. As one disaster after another, one goof up after another occurs, they let us know that nothing fazes them, they are clueless.

And then they slap us with "Let them eat cake" comments.

Here is the story of Condi Rice shopping for shoes in Manhattan while many blacks were dying in New Orleans. She really didn't give two carrots for them.

From Sept. 1, 2005:

Cartoon by Elaine Meinel Supkis

Condi Rice decided to pause in her pursuit of the perfect high heel to give her opinion about all those n... people in New Orleans only I have no idea what this bint said nor do I care.

She is a disgrace to this nation, to the planet, to the universe.

Sort of like KISSINGER.

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