Thursday - September 08, 2005

Spam Attack

For the second day in a row, this blog has been the target of a “Referrer Spammer”. Beginning around 10:00am EDT yesterday and at 12:00pm EDT today, these idjits started slamming the site with all kinds of fake referrer pings from sites for viagra, adult-friends, used car dealers, leather goods stores, etc., etc. Why do they do this? Because this is an extremely high-traffic site and it makes their sites’ statistics look good by linking to us and thereby enabling them to charge more for advertising. Yes, it’s a rip-off but what else are spammers good for?

Hosting Matters jumped on it right away and blocked the jerks. However, the blog was inaccessible for about thirty minutes or more. I apologize for any inconvenience and for any trouble you may have had in reaching the site. We are working with Hosting Matters to put a permanent stop to this nefarious activity from the “Axis Of Spam”.

Update: I have just received a reply from Hosting Matters that referrer blocking software is now turned on and the asshats cannot possibly get back in. So there! I challenge the spammers - give it your best shot! I’ll even give you our IP address: 216.158.28.197, port 80. Go ahead! See if you can break that!

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 09/08/2005 at 12:33 PM   
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Self Sufficiency Shines

This is not the typical story you’re hearing from the city of New Orleans this week.
(posted here in it’s entirety since they require registration)

A do-it-ourselves shelter shines
A community bands together in civilized self-sufficiency, in stark contrast to the misery in official New Orleans shelters.

NEW ORLEANS - When their homes began to sink in Katrina’s floodwaters, elders in the quarter here known as Uptown gathered their neighbors to seek refuge at the Samuel J. Green Charter School, the local toughs included.

But when the thugs started vandalizing the place - wielding guns and breaking into vending machines - Vance Anthion put them out, literally tossing them into the fetid waters. Anthion stayed awake at night after that, protecting the inhabitants of the school from looters or worse.

They know me,” he said. “If a man come up in here, we take care of him.”

In the week after Katrina pummeled the Gulf Coast, Anthion and others created a society that defied the local gangs, the National Guard and even the flood.

Inside the school, it was quiet, cool and clean. They converted a classroom into a dining room and, when a reporter arrived Monday, were serving a lunch of spicy red beans and rice. A table nearby overflowed with supplies: canned spaghetti, paper towels, water and Gatorade, salt, hot sauce, pepper.

At its peak last Wednesday, 40 people called the second and third floors home. The bottom floor was under water. Most of those taking up residence at the school were family, friends and neighbors of the poor, forgotten niches of this community.

As the days passed, most chose to be evacuated by the Coast Guard who, they said, came every day to help ferry out the elderly and sick, and to leave water, food and clean clothes for whose who preferred to stay.

By Monday, just 10 diehards remained at the school.

*See extended entry for the rest*

Posted by Drew458     on 09/08/2005 at 11:23 AM   
Filed Under: • Climate-Weather •  
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Criminal Negligence: Arrest Governor Blanco

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Major Garrett of Fox News yesterday about an outrageous revelation in the Katrina tragedy. The entire interview was posted at RadioBlogger. The entire interview is posted here below also (click “CONTINUE READING” below). Here is an excerpt:

HH: You just broke a pretty big story. I was watching up on the corner television in my studio, and it’s headlined that the Red Cross was blocked from delivering supplies to the Superdome, Major Garrett. Tell us what you found out.

MG: Well, the Red Cross, Hugh, had pre-positioned a literal vanguard of trucks with water, food, blankets and hygiene items. They’re not really big into medical response items, but those are the three biggies that we saw people at the New Orleans Superdome, and the convention center, needing most accutely. And all of us in America, I think, reasonably asked ourselves, geez. You know, I watch hurricanes all the time. And I see correspondents standing among rubble and refugees and evacuaees. But I always either see that Red Cross or Salvation Army truck nearby. Why don’t I see that?

HH: And the answer is?

MG: The answer is the Louisiana Department of Homeland Security, that is the state agency responsible for that state’s homeland security, told the Red Cross explicitly, you cannot come.

....

HH: Now Major Garrett, what about the Louisiana governor’s office of Homeland Security. Have they responded to this charge by the Red Cross, which is a blockbuster charge?

MG: I have not been able to reach them yet. But, what they have said consistently is, and what they told the Red Cross, we don’t want you to come in there, because we have evacuees that we want to get out. And if you come in, they’re more likely to stay. So I want your listeners to follow me here. At the very moment that Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans was screaming where’s the food, where’s the water, it was over the overpass, and state officials were saying you can’t come in.

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 09/08/2005 at 08:36 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Outrageous •  
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Louisiana Pork

Money Flowed to Questionable Projects
State Leads in Army Corps Spending, but Millions Had Nothing to Do With Floods
(WASHINGTON POST - Sept. 8)

Before Hurricane Katrina breached a levee on the New Orleans Industrial Canal, the Army Corps of Engineers had already launched a $748 million construction project at that very location. But the project had nothing to do with flood control. The Corps was building a huge new lock for the canal, an effort to accommodate steadily increasing barge traffic.

Except that barge traffic on the canal has been steadily decreasing.

In Katrina’s wake, Louisiana politicians and other critics have complained about paltry funding for the Army Corps in general and Louisiana projects in particular. But over the five years of President Bush’s administration, Louisiana has received far more money for Corps civil works projects than any other state, about $1.9 billion; California was a distant second with less than $1.4 billion, even though its population is more than seven times as large.

Much of that Louisiana money was spent to try to keep low-lying New Orleans dry. But hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to unrelated water projects demanded by the state’s congressional delegation and approved by the Corps, often after economic analyses that turned out to be inaccurate. Despite a series of independent investigations criticizing Army Corps construction projects as wasteful pork-barrel spending, Louisiana’s representatives have kept bringing home the bacon.

For example, after a $194 million deepening project for the Port of Iberia flunked a Corps cost-benefit analysis, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) tucked language into an emergency Iraq spending bill ordering the agency to redo its calculations. The Corps also spends tens of millions of dollars a year dredging little-used waterways such as the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, the Atchafalaya River and the Red River—now known as the J. Bennett Johnston Waterway, in honor of the project’s congressional godfather—for barge traffic that is less than forecast.

The Industrial Canal lock is one of the agency’s most controversial projects, sued by residents of a New Orleans low-income black neighborhood and cited by an alliance of environmentalists and taxpayer advocates as the fifth-worst current Corps boondoggle. In 1998, the Corps justified its plan to build a new lock—rather than fix the old lock for a tiny fraction of the cost—by predicting huge increases in use by barges traveling between the Port of New Orleans and the Mississippi River.

In fact, barge traffic on the canal had been plummeting since 1994, but the Corps left that data out of its study. And barges have continued to avoid the canal since the study was finished, even though they are visiting the port in increased numbers.

Pam Dashiell, president of the Holy Cross Neighborhood Association, remembers holding a protest against the lock four years ago—right where the levee broke Aug. 30. Now she’s holed up with her family in a St. Louis hotel, and her neighborhood is underwater. “Our politicians never cared half as much about protecting us as they cared about pork,” Dashiell said.

Yesterday, congressional defenders of the Corps said they hoped the fallout from Hurricane Katrina would pave the way for billions of dollars of additional spending on water projects. Steve Ellis, a Corps critic with Taxpayers for Common Sense, called their push “the legislative equivalent of looting.”

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 09/08/2005 at 08:08 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Outrageous •  
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You Know Its True

_{Wayne Stayskal, Tampa, FL, Tribune Media Services}

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 09/08/2005 at 08:02 AM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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   Wednesday - September 07, 2005

No Taranto-lanche Today

We posted this morning about Teddy Kennedy’s ludicrous statement about rich people escaping while poor people drowned and sent James Taranto at the WSJ’s Best Of The Web Today a link to the post. In today’s issue of Taranto’s journal, we found this:

Notable and Quotable

“What the American people have seen is this incredible disparity in which those people who had cars and money got out and those people who were impoverished died."--Ted Kennedy on Hurricane Katrina

“"--Mary Jo Kopechne on Hurricane Katrina

And all they way at the bottom of the page in the list of “contributors” is the Skipper’s name but no blog link. Bummer!


Apology: Skipper has also requested that I “downsize” the Big Mac version of his picture in the right sidebar and apologize for blowing him up. I are sorry. Now can I have fries with that tiny cheeseburger, Skip?

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 09/07/2005 at 03:22 PM   
Filed Under: • Media-Bias •  
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In An Alternative Universe

President Kerry Slams Republican Congress Over Katrina
NEW ORLEANS (AP) Sept. 6

In New Orleans today, President Kerry issued a statement saying the human suffering was “seared, yes seared” into his memory and blamed Congress for not passing his recent 2006 budget which would have cut all funding to the US military and funneled over $500 billion into welfare and social programs. The largely Republican Congress has also been blamed by Vice President Edwards for further slowing the economy by refusing to pass the 35% tax hike proposed by Kerry.

Kerry stated, “if we had snatched, erh, allocated that money for ghettos like New Orleans this country would not be in the shape it finds itself in today.” He went on to say that “spreading the wealth” was the only way to raise all people out of poverty and that rich people like his wife Teresa, who is currently undergoing alcoholism and drug dependency treatments at an undisclosed sanitarium in Vermont, are all willing to share if given the chance. Teresa was unavailable for comment.

Fortunately for the administration, there was plenty of military available to move into New Orleans following the recent disaster since all troops were pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan in March of this year. Citing Iraq as “the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time” Kerry has posted returning troops at greatly reduced bases in the continental US. Over 2 million members of the Armed Forces have since retired or gone AWOL but there were sufficient numbers to swiflty man boats in New Orleans this week.

The recent takeover in Iraq and Afghanistan by radical Muslims and the nuclear bombing of Israel have all been attributed by Kerry to the previous administraions poor judgement in not allowing the United Nations to manage the situation. Kerry said “US intervention overseas was no longer an option” and “the policy of [his] administration would be based on UN management of US Armed Forces.”

Hollywood stars Sean Penn and Barbara Streisand praised Kerry for breaking short his three month vacation in Aspen by one day to quickly board Air Force One and rush to the aid of the poor, deprived black people of New Orleans. Kerry’s first statement upon arriving at Louis B. Armstong airport was a moment of high drama as the President descended to the tarmac and immediately announced, “Bill Clinton was this country’s first black President and I am the second. I feel your pain, my bro’s!”

Meanwhile, back in Washington, Vice President Edwards announced that the President had declared martial law and all Cadillac dealerships in the Southeast were ordered to turn over all late model Coupe De Villes for immediate dispersal to the 108,000 poor left stranded in New Orleans. Edwards told the Senate that it would be cheaper than trying to fly them out. Senate Republicans immediately threatened a filibuster over the move but the Vice President had all 55 Republican Senators arrested for inhumane treatment of American citizens.

In a speech to the nation last night, President Kerry informed Americans of new gas rationing measures and an added federal tax of $5 per gallon on gas to pay for relief efforts. He went on to say the the country would weather this storm and that if Mother Nature had more in store, the country would be ready. He ended his fireside chat by urging Mother Nature to “bring it on!”

In related news, former President Bush completed the sale of his Crawford, Texas ranch last week and had moved to Australia. He could not be reached for comment.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/07/2005 at 01:28 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor • Insanity •  
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Stylish Refugees?

Stylish Seized Clothing Headed To Refugees
HOUSTON (REUTERS - Sept. 6)

Three truckloads of fashion clothing seized by government agents for violating import quotas arrived at Houston’s Astrodome on Wednesday so Hurricane Katrina refugees there can put it to use. U.S. Customs and Border Protection delivered about 100,000 items of summer clothing, with an estimated value of $2.3 million, and said much more is on the way to evacuees elsewhere.

“We normally would either sell this merchandise or destroy it,” said Robert Trotter, the agency’s director of field operations. “Or we would donate it on a smaller scale.” Some of the items are fakes, but Trotter said most are legitimate. The hurricane relief operation, aimed at the more than 1 million Gulf Coast residents displaced by Katrina last week, will involve a total of $168 million worth of clothing.

The items delivered on Tuesday, much of it with designer labels like Fubu and Code Blue, were handed to the Red Cross and local church officials who were to distribute it. “They will be able to tell us specifically what they want and a personal shopper will go back and get it for them,” said Mike Firenza of St. Luke’s Methodist Church. “It will be one of the finest-dressed shelters that there’s ever been.”

The Astrodome, a 40-year-old sports stadium that had fallen into disuse recently, housed about 16,000 refugees on Tuesday. Three other major shelters in Houston housed a total of 10,000.

Katrina Victims to Get $2K Debit Cards
WASHINGTON (AP - Sept. 7)

The federal government plans to begin doling out debit cards worth $2,000 each to adult victims of Hurricane Katrina, The Associated Press has learned. Homeland Security Department Secretary Michael Chertoff descibed the plan in a conference call with state officials Wednesday morning. The unprecedented cash card program initially will benefit stranded people who have been moved to major rescue centers such as the Houston Astrodome.

“They are going to start issuing debit cards, $2,000 per adult, today (Wednesday) at the Astrodome,” said Kathy Walt, a spokeswoman for Texas Gov. Rick Perry. The cards could be used to buy food, transportation, gas and other essentials, according to a state official who was on the call and requested anonymity because the program has not been publicly announced. In Boston, Gov. Mitt Romney said the cards will be offered “to people in shelters as well as people who are not in shelters but who have evacuated the area and need help.” He said the hope is the cards will encourage people to leave shelters voluntarily.

It’s unclear how much the debit card program will cost the government, but it’s likely to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars since hundreds of thousands of people have been displaced.

Posted by The Skipper     on 09/07/2005 at 12:06 PM   
Filed Under: • Outrageous •  
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Photo Du Jour

Sigmund Solares
September 6, 2005

Posted by Drew458     on 09/07/2005 at 10:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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The Man-Made Disaster

An Unnatural Disaster: A Hurricane Exposes the Man-Made Disaster of the Welfare State
by Robert Tracinski

It took four long days for state and federal officials to figure out how to deal with the disaster in New Orleans. I can’t blame them, because it also took me four long days to figure out what was going on there. The reason is that the events there make no sense if you think that we are confronting a natural disaster.

If this is just a natural disaster, the response for public officials is obvious: you bring in food, water, and doctors; you send transportation to evacuate refugees to temporary shelters; you send engineers to stop the flooding and rebuild the city’s infrastructure. For journalists, natural disasters also have a familiar pattern: the heroism of ordinary people pulling together to survive; the hard work and dedication of doctors, nurses, and rescue workers; the steps being taken to clean up and rebuild.

Public officials did not expect that the first thing they would have to do is to send thousands of armed troops in armored vehicle, as if they are suppressing an enemy insurgency. And journalists—myself included—did not expect that the story would not be about rain, wind, and flooding, but about rape, murder, and looting.

But this is not a natural disaster. It is a man-made disaster.

Go read the rest.  It’s not a P.C. article, but it sure hits the mark.

**Update** Woops.  Ronnie had already posted this article here.  I need to get some more coffee.  Closing this post due to redundancy.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/07/2005 at 08:39 AM   
Filed Under: • Crime •  
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Problem Solved

Problem: OldCatMan has been flooding the Skipper’s e-mail Inbox with messages complaining about the site being slow to load. Skipper finally checked his e-mail last night and asked me to look at it so I loaded some of my monitoring tools. After watching it for a few hours this morning, I found the problem. It is with BlogRolling.com which feeds this page the list of the Skipper’s blogrolled sites. I just checked with them and their server and database is flaking and has been giving trouble since Monday.

Solution: Terminated (with extreme prejudice) link to BlogRolling.com until they get their act together. The Skipper’s blogroll is now a static list embedded in the HTML for this page. I also turned on caching on the server here for the main page (five minute refresh) so if Frank posts something it may not appear immediately.

Now would someone please explain to OldCatMan the benefits of ditching the dial-up and getting broadband?

Tip Of The Day: If you’re using FireFox, here’s a tip to speed things up on your end: In the address bar, type “about:config” for the URL. You will see the browser’s internal settings displayed. Look for “network.prefetch-next” (it’s alphabetical). It is normally set to “true” by default”. Double-click this line to change it to “false”. This will save you time and possibly your job if you browse from work. Here’s the science: when you open a page, if this value is set to “true” it goes out and pre-loads all the pages linked from that page. This adds substantially to page load time but speeds up loads of pages linked from that page. However, you may not go to any of those links so it is a waste of cache in your browser. In addition, if you are sitting at your desk at work and you decide to browse some sites which are normally clean subject matter but have links to advertisers like porn sites or poker sites, you could be in a world of hurt when the network admins inform your boss of pages you’ve visited (even though you never actually visited them). Get the point?

Posted by Ronald Reagan's Ghost     on 09/07/2005 at 08:25 AM   
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Jane Backs up the Bus

Hanoi Jane “doesn’t want to distract from Cindy’s bus trip”, so she is canceling her own anti-war anti-troop bus tour.

What is it about liberals and bus trips? Is there something romantic about getting on a greyhound and rumbling across the nation? Me?  I’d rather be in my

Posted by Drew458     on 09/07/2005 at 08:10 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists •  
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Grand Slam

Picked this up from the fine folks at Wizbang this morning:

One of the many thousands of people made refugees by Hurricane Katrina is the Fields family. This couple has seven kids, and they were staying at an Atlanta hotel until a web site set up to help families find temporary homes put them in touch with an anonymous benefactor who offered to put them up in a Boston hotel for up to a year, if necessary.

No fools, the Fields jumped at the chance. They arrived in Beantown over the weekend, and met their benefactors at the hotel. A youngish couple, soft-spoken and rather devout, fulfilling what they viewed as their Christian duty and sharing the blessings they have been given in life.

But the couple’s name struck Mr. Fields as unusual. It seemed vaguely familiar. He could only recall ever hearing it once before, but he couldn’t quite place it…

And then it came to him: sports. More specifically, a Boston Red Sox pitcher. One who had been the hero of the World Series, nearly literally crippling himself to bring home the championship after 86 years.

It was no coincidence—the Fields’ benefactors were indeed Curt and Shonda Schilling.

They’d hoped for anonymity, but it didn’t work out. And so while Schilling is having a mediocre season on the Red Sox, most likely to tearing the hell out of his ankle and foot last year (he finished one game with his sock soaked in blood), even those of us who don’t give a damn about sports have good reason to think of him as a hero.

Nice.  Contrast this with Mssr. Penn and his “helping hand”.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/07/2005 at 07:25 AM   
Filed Under: • News-Briefs •  
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Busses?

Here, ladies and gentlefolks, is the latest satellite photo of those idle busses in New Orleans. Apparently, they have been possessed and re-arranged themselves to give us a message.

Posted by Drew458     on 09/07/2005 at 05:24 AM   
Filed Under: • Odd-Strange •  
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Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:

1. Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
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3. Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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