Nobody Likes Ike

It is Saturday, September 6, and I am still inside THE CONE OF DEATH.

I don’t know why they call it “the cone of uncertainty” on TV. It’s THE CONE OF DEATH. We all know that. We know that because everyone inside the cone is certain to die. If not during the storm, eventually. You can’t dismiss the connection just because it takes ninety years to come to fruition. A lot of people were in Miami during the 1926 hurricane, and they lived through it. But now most of them are dead, so their gloating was ill-advised.

I hate to say there has been “good” news at a moment like this, but I feel safe in saying there has been news that suggests my life is going to be easier than previously thought. Ike’s cone keeps sliding down the monitor screen, and today, the center of the cone is several hundred miles from me. Two days ago it was right over my house, and now it’s over Cuba. I am afraid the Lord will smack me if I call that good news, because Cuba is in trouble. But I would not be human if I did not feel some relief. Some people can sleep in Miami without air conditioning. It is a trick I have never mastered. I guess I’m spoiled, but I cannot drift off while stuck to warm, wet, mildewy sheets and pillows, especially when my windows are open and I can hear every generator in the neighborhood, sputtering.

When you close your windows and turn on the air conditioning, which hums, you get a certain amount of relief from noise. In Miami, this is helpful partly because it shuts out barking dogs and neighbors who play salsa at three a.m., but also because it makes it harder to hear the sound of giant roaches skittering around on the hardwood floor near your bed. Try to sleep with that going on. Every time it makes a sound, you wonder if it’s about to climb up the side of the bed and under your sheets. Which actually happens. Much better to sleep soundly and discover the mashed roach in bed with you the next day.

Loyal reader Pam, who lives in South Carolina, sent a couple of pictures documenting extensive damage from Tropical Storm Hanna. The photos feature four patio chairs which are no longer upright, as well as a couple of twigs that fell off an oak tree. Later on, I’ll post a Paypal link so you can send Pam money. She sent another interesting email. I only skimmed it. Something about illegal aliens trying on her underwear. I don’t have to tell you how disconcerting that can be.

Bad news for Al Gore (and good news for the human race–funny how often it works out that way): the tropics are settling down. We are not expecting the parade of hurricanes to continue unabated. Let’s hope this is the end of the season, so I can relax and grow my bananas in peace.

The roaches aren’t doing too good. Those Combat baits really work. And I’m making great headway against the ghost ants. God bless the nuts in New Zealand who published the sugar-and-boric-acid syrup recipe. You have to wonder why a person would bother putting a thing like that on the Internet, but it seems to have worked. I’m getting so cocky, sometimes I leave food on the kitchen counter just so I can have the pleasure of coming back later and seeing it not buried in a mass of squirming ants.

This is a lot better than my previous solution, which was to learn to eat ants without complaining. If you have eaten anything I’ve cooked here over the last three or four years, you probably ate a good number of ants. I used to discard anty food, but now as long as the food part outweighs the ant part, I just eat it. Over the years, I’ve probably eaten a thousand ants, which, if they were combined in one gob, would be about the size of a BB. They are said to be highly nutritious. All I know is, they have no perceptible flavor, and their droppings are not big enough to be visible against the white surface inside a sugar canister.

This is where ants and Miami roaches differ.

Incidentally, I’ve heard that putting boric acid in your underwear will discourage illegal aliens from trying it on. Your mileage may vary. Another option: cayenne. Here’s something you can put in your underwear that will definitely discourage Mexicans from trying it on: a Rottweiler.

Things are generally looking up, although McDonald’s managed to ruin my breakfast again. I felt like living dangerously, so I ordered a Sausage McMuffin instead of an Egg McMuffin today, and they took me very literally, giving me a McMuffin with sausage and cheese, but no egg. What’s that all about? My arteries cry out for their daily dose of cholesterol, and they’re not getting it. When you don’t eat enough cholesterol, your arteries open up, resistance to blood flow drops, and your heart gets lazy and weak. I dont want that happening to me. That’s why I challenge my heart every day. Some days, I get up and inject cream cheese directly into my neck.

I suppose Cuba would have been threatened by Hurricane Ike, even if it had hit Miami. When Miami gets hit, it cuts off the gigantic flow of refrigerators, ovens, TVs, and other items Cubans in Miami ship to Cuba every day. Viva el embargo. People say Miami Cubans are not in favor of sending American wealth to Cuba. That’s not exactly right. Every Cuban in Miami is highly, highly in favor of sending wealth to Cuban Cubans…IN HIS OR HER FAMILY. What they’re firmly against is anything getting to any Cuban in Cuba who doesn’t have relatives in Hialeah. The embargo: it’s for OTHER Cubans. It’s a highly nuanced position. Study it well. If you get to the point where you understand it, maybe you can explain it to me. Start with the premise that there is no blatant inconsistency here; that will keep you from drawing any conclusions that get you mentioned on Spanish-language AM radio.

The only thing I’m sure of is that it’s okay to ship a cargo container full of DVD players to Cuba in the morning, and then lecture me later in the day for smoking a Cohiba. Sending ten thousand dollars’ worth of appliances doesn’t prop up the revolution in the slightest, but one double corona may well save Castro from humiliation, in addition to increasing my already-impressive carbon footprint.

Cuba was going to take a beating, regardless of which way Ike turned. So maybe it IS okay to be happy it’s not headed for Florida. Why should it harm Cuba AND me?

Man, I like the way I think. I like the cut of my jib.

I wonder, if I went back to McDonald’s and showed them my receipt, whether they would hand over the egg they shorted me.

Blasphemy Buttons

Want to express your opinion of the paltry qualifications of former ward heeler Barack Obama?

Here’s one way.

Suspense is Pain

In ten minutes, the Hurricane Ike Cone of Death updates. I always hate these intervals before the forecasters decide who lives or dies. I have suffered through hundreds or thousands of them. And even though Ike is a major threat, while Hanna is a fairly puny storm, Hanna updates every three hours, and Ike takes twice as long.

Right now, they’re talking about Category 4, with me in the north eyewall. Not unlike Andrew. I would really appreciate some good news right now.

Last night, they seemed to be suggesting this thing was headed for Palm Beach. I have nothing against the fine folks in Palm Beach. I never pray a hurricane will hit someone else. But I have to admit, I felt better before the Cone of Death slid south.

A Category 4 in Miami would be a hideous spectacle. Not as bad as Andrew, because we’ve improved our preparations, and because a lot of the stuff that can be blown over by hurricanes has already been blown over and carted to the dump. But it would probably mean weeks without power. Days without water. A total cessation of productivity. And a return to those sweaty sheets I remember with such fondness. I am not eager to repeat these experiences.

I am tempted to get a generator, finally. For little storms, a generator is pointless, because the power only goes out for two or three days. A week is unusual. For big storms, it makes more sense. I think Andrew knocked power out in this neighborhood for about six weeks. I’m actually looking at the Lowes site.

Whoops, here comes the update.

YES! YES! THE PATH SHIFTED A HUNDRED MILES SOUTH!

Oops. I mean, “Darn, it looks like the Keys and the Gulf states are in trouble.”

Ward Brewer must be in Havana.

This could actually be a good thing. It might squeeze between Cuba and the Keys and hit a sparsely populated area in the Yucatan Peninsula. And the winds have dropped to 120, which suddenly seems like a nice number. If the eye is a hundred miles south of me, as currently projected, the damage to Florida will be limited to areas where there aren’t many people. We’ll get blown around, and I’m sure Florida Power and Light will find an excuse to leave us in the dark for half a day, but it won’t be Son of Andrew.

Generators seem to be much better than they used to be. For under a grand, I can get a 4250-watt generator that runs 21 hours on one tank, and it has 240 for hot water. Are hot water heaters 240-volt? Whatever. I can run my welder and compressor, at least. I can take sheets of scrap steel and build a turret from which I can shoot looters.

Sorry to say it, but the generators with Japanese engines are much more tempting. I don’t know where Briggs & Stratton makes its engines, but if it’s not Japan, they can keep them. I support the USA and all that, but my support ends when it comes to products I truly have to trust.

I know the storm is too far away for me to make predictions. The odds that it will hit me are slim. There is no reason to go out and spaz on the front lawn. I might do it anyway, just for the comforting sensation.

I hope everyone in Hanna’s path is taking precautions. Trust me, a big cooler and fifty pounds of ice will cover a multitude of sins. If you don’t have LED flashlights, get some. They burn forever on one set of batteries. And don’t underestimate the value of storm candles. You don’t always need bright light. A candle in your living room can keep you from running your toe into furniture, and a big one will burn for days.

Val Prieto has a preparation list up. Funny, I don’t see Beanee Weenee™ on there.

Let’s all pray this thing breaks up and heads for uninhabited land.

Incidentally, a reader has a charity recommendation. The charity is called Mercy and Sharing, and their site says 100% of donations reach Haitian children, because the charity’s founders cover the administrative costs. I can’t vouch for them, because I can’t find them at Charity Watch or Charity Navigator, but you may be able to find better information.

Here’s a link.

Lemme Blow Your House Down, Anna Mae

There is no reason for Miami to exist in August and early September. Either we get hit by hurricanes, or we get near-misses, and we spend the whole period wondering if we’re going to have to lie on sweaty sheets and live on warm sandwiches and hand-wash our underwear again. It’s too bad the whole town can’t just disappear on August 1 and reappear in October. In fact, that’s almost what happens. This place is empty in August. Everyone who can afford it is in North Carolina or Europe. We’ve ruined North Carolina. There are so many of us up there, it’s not worth going.

Hanna is taking a nice pounding from wind shear, and because it developed where it did, it’s facing steering currents which should curve it out to sea until it either vanishes or hits another state as a weak storm. It looks like the Bahamas got a break, which is nice, because Bahamians never shift out of first gear. Getting things done in the Bahamas is not easy. Imagine living on a Bahamian island where half of the houses need hurricane repairs.

I want to be fair. It’s true; some Bahamians are businesslike and efficient. They’re called “Americans.” They all moved here, years ago. Okay, not all. But a lot.

I remember spending time in Nassau in about 1991. Aaron was there. We were on my dad’s boat. Somehow, we had managed to dig the props into some coral, and my dad and I had to roam around the city looking for someone to true a shaft. Think about this. The town depends on the sea. It’s jam-packed with yachts and cruise ships. In Miami, which is also a bad place to be when your boat needs work, I can drive to Miami Propeller, drop the stuff off on Monday, and pick it up on Friday. Big props, little props, big shafts, little shafts; doesn’t matter. But Nassau had one guy, with a name like “Winkie.” He worked in an open shed. All he could do was heat the shaft with a torch and bang on it and then turn it in a jig to see if it was true.

I don’t know what the deal is. Maybe it’s hard to open a business over there, but I somehow doubt it, because Bahamian life does not seem highly regulated. Of course, I suppose that if I were an enterprising Bahamian with a business idea, my first move would be to buy a ticket to Florida.

Fun place, the Bahamas. Too bad it’s not a state. The economy would go insane.

Ike is looking pretty scary right now. It’s expected to be a Category 3 on the way across the Bahamas, and the current Cone of Death is suddenly centered directly over my head! Not again! How many hurricanes have hit me since 2000? Four? I can’t even remember. Katrina, Wilma, Rita…three? I am now officially competing with Ward Brewer for the title of Hurricane Magnet of the Decade.

Josephine is the only storm that really makes me happy at this point. It’s weak, it’s far away, it’s expected to go to the middle of the Atlantic, and it’s named after the world’s most famous exotic dancer.

The bizarre fact that keeps me afloat these days is this: the appearance of several simultaneous storms does not mean the rest of the season will be bad. This has happened before, and it happened during perfectly ordinary seasons. So we shouldn’t count on one storm a week for the rest of the year. I don’t think we’ll be dipping into the Greek letters again. Nonetheless, I grudgingly admit that Al Gore and the Global Warming fans are getting some nice breaks here. And I may be in for a lousy week.

When you have storms out there, it messes up your life. The weather here gets drippy and nasty, so you don’t feel like doing anything outdoors. Fishing is out of the question. Going to the range is not easy. You just feel like slumping on the couch and waiting for things to clear up. You can’t go anywhere, because while you’re gone, a storm could go crazy and make a beeline for your house. Now that I think about it, it’s odd that people feel brave enough to go on vacation in August.

Pray that Ike breaks up and heads out to sea. I would not wish an August hurricane on Michael Vick.

Go Rent 9 to 5

Is it just me, or are the PUMAs even more in love with Sarah Palin than the Republicans?

You tell me.

One of them voices a sentiment Republicans are very familiar with: McCain isn’t that bad. We would have preferred a Thompson or a Brownback or a Hunter, but we got McCain, and the alternatives are far-left-fringe Supreme Court justices and federal judges, plus the dismantling of the national security apparatus that has kept us safe since 2001. So, wow, do I suddenly love John McCain.

As for attacking Sarah Palin as a mother, and attacking her daughter for making a mistake many, many of Hillary’s supporters have made, all I can say to Obagman’s campaign staff is “thanks.” And please keep it up.

If there is one thing women love, it’s seeing a young, flashy, inexperienced man sweep in and take a job away from an older woman who has been in the trenches for decades. And the supercilious attitude of the Obagman campaign is just icing on the cake.

In practice, McCain and Sarah Palin may turn out to be a fairly moderate duo most Americans can swallow without choking. Hey, it could be worse.

Extemporizing not Above Her Pay Grade

Sources now tell us that during last night’s speeches by Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin, the teleprompters didn’t work. So they had to do much of their speaking extemporaneously.

How about that? They were winging it. But their speeches were so excellent, they infuriated liberal commentators.

We all know what happens when Obama has no teleprompter. They don’t call him “Uh-bama” for nothing. He rambles. He can’t collect his thoughts. He makes errors. He’s deadly dull. This shows you the difference between Giuliani the seasoned trial lawyer and Obama the ward heeler with a law degree.

I look forward to the debates.

Am I the only one who has a hard time believing “malfunction” is the right word? The teleprompters were supposed to stop during applause, and they didn’t, so the text got so far ahead of the speakers, they weren’t able to use it. I very much doubt TV production people let the machine decide when to pause. How would you program it to do that? I’m sure there’s a person making the decisions.

Is it possible this was sabotage? You can’t help but wonder. Maybe the “pause” button broke.

The wonderful thing about this week is that the landmines the Republicans have hit have turned out to be blessings for the McCain campaign. Hurricane Gustav brushed New Orleans, and it only served to showcase Bobby Jindal’s competence and the party’s willingness to put the needs of the citizens first. A filthy piece of libel forced Sarah Palin to tell the press her daughter was pregnant, and the vicious response made American hearts warm toward both of them. Now the teleprompter problem proves Sarah Palin is smart and tough, and that she has an amazing capacity to work under pressure. This was the most important moment of her political career, and the rug was yanked out from under her, and she didn’t merely survive; she conquered. She is turning out to be what Obama was supposed to be, but is not.

So often, adversity is like that. The things you fear the most turn out to be gifts from God.

More

Politico’s Jonathan Martin says the teleprompter was fine, but Fox and MSNBC confirm that it was screwed up. McCain’s people say only Sarah Palin’s speech was affected. Since Fox and MSNBC are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, and they appear to agree, I believe them and not Martin.

Dirt

I got a very long, rambling comment about Sarah Palin’s negatives. Rather than publish anonymous, unauthenticated rants from anonymous web denizens, I will post a link to a more-or-less genuine news source, Salon Magazine, where you can see the dirt for yourself.

You can balance it against the clear terror of the left, and her 80% approval rating in her home state.

“Maybe That’s the First Problem With His Resume”

I don’t know what Giuliani plans to do with the rest of his life, but if he becomes a standup comic, I will be in the front row at every show.

“He was a ‘community organizer’…WHAT?”

I went back and played that a second time.

The wonderful thing about Giuliani’s speech was that he didn’t have to stray from the truth at all. Obama really was a community organizer, which means he was a ward heeler. It means he was paid to bring people into line so they would vote for his bosses. He was a professional agitator. It’s a fairly sordid profession. Those “skills” won’t work too good in the Oval Office.

It’s amazing that a Harvard-trained lawyer would do a job they used to hire legbreakers to do.

As for Sarah Palin, if the Enquirer’s story about her supposed affair turns out to be bogus, she ought to be invincible from here on out. As Fred Barnes said, she’s a natural. The one thing that beats a phenom is another, better phenom. And she’s it.

Genius, or Plain Old Greed?

I get annoyed with the T. Boone Pickens windmill commercials. Windmills are eyesores, and it turns out they cause a lot of environmental damage, in the form of dead birds. And the low-frequency sound they emit supposedly has devastating health effects on some animals and people. Apart from that, they draw attention away from safe, clean, abundant nuclear power, which we have utterly failed to exploit. Maybe the hazards of windmills can be beaten, but right now, the people who promote them are sweeping the issue under the rug.

One thing he says seems intelligent, however. He’s pushing natural gas as a fuel. And today I saw a news story saying many people in Utah are already using it, at a cost that compares to 87-cent gasoline.

That sounds wonderful. But I seem to recall a troubling principle called “supply and demand.” Right now, almost nobody owns a gas-powered car. That means the vehicle-driven demand for natural gas is negligible. Now, what if we convert a hundred million vehicles? What happens then? The figure may be 87 cents now, but for all I know, it could rise to fifty dollars when we’re all bidding on the same cubic foot of gas. And I can’t find the information on the web. It’s such an obvious threshold question. Has T. Boone even considered it?

People say Apple computers are immune to viruses and hacks. That’s a huge lie. The reason Apples are safer is that they make up a small percentage of the market, and hackers want to wreak as much havoc as possible, so they usually program for Windows. As Apples become more popular, they are proving just as vulnerable as Windows computers. Probably more vulnerable, because the Apple people think they’re safe, and they’re not trying as hard to protect themselves. The same sort of idea applies to gas-powered cars. The more of them there are, the lower the gas price advantage will probably be.

Look how the price of corn skyrocketed when we decided it was a fuel.

His site says our gas reserves are twice as big as our petroleum reserves. That’s no answer. Does he mean they contain twice the useful energy? Twice the volume? The site doesn’t say. The best scenario would be if the gas reserves contained twice the energy. But that still doesn’t tell you what the gas would cost when you pull up at a service station.

Critics point out that the same people who now sell us oil have most of the world’s gas, so we might be dependent on them even after a mass conversion. If their gas is cheaper, we’ll buy it and let ours sit in the ground. And T. Boone is up to his eyeballs in potentially profitable wind and gas investments, so he has a powerful motive to push these alternatives regardless of whether they make sense. He didn’t become a billionaire through altruism.

Oil shale and oil sand still look mighty good. The break-even point is way below the current price of oil, and we have reserves so huge they give the Saudis nightmares. And oil is a marvelous fuel, and we’re already set up to use it. Ethanol is a disgraceful CO2-belching joke. We need to think about solutions that actually work, without causing famine or grotesque environmental damage.

Maybe the answer is to use gas for fleet vehicles, which don’t have to rely on a network of stations, and to power most of our passenger cars with oil from shale. It looks like Pickens may be more interested in feathering his already-huge nest than in helping the planet.

He says he’s been an oil man all his life, and now he’s pushing windmills and gas. Doesn’t that kind of make sense, now that he’s a windmills-and-gas man?

More

If you want disturbing news, go to the Pickens site and use their handy natural-gas-station locator. The places nearest to my house are in the next county. After that, I believe you have to go to Atlanta. The locator also says what the current “gallon” price is. In Atlanta, it’s $2.54. Down here, it’s $1.50 and $1.20. So 87¢ is already optimistic. I had a gas-powered car right now, I’d have to drive sixty miles to fill up, and I’d pay a minimum of $1.20.

Nice Work

I forced myself to watch the Republican convention last night. Ordinarily, I try to minimize my exposure to political programming. Long ago, I abandoned the notion that this should be a political blog. And watching people strive with each other, competing who can tell the most damaging lies, makes my stomach hurt.

My overall impression was that Sarah Palin has electrified Republicans. A couple of weeks ago, we were listless and bored. Now we’re sending money to McCain. We’re cheering for Sarah. We’re furious at the slimy attacks on her daughter. We even like John McCain. That, in and of itself, is miraculous.

Whoever chose Sarah Palin is a political genius. He moved millions of Hillary voters into the GOP camp (check PUMA sites and see for yourself), he woke up the base, he gave hope to Christians, and he added a powerful dose of legitimacy to McCain’s “reformer” label.

The vicious efforts to humiliate her child have backfired. They make Obama’s supporters look inhuman. They exposed the diseased heart of the far left, which includes much of the mainstream media.

President Bush made a brief, polished, gracious video appearance. Vice President Cheney had the good sense to stay away, even though none of the evils the left attributes to him have been substantiated. Then we were treated to a tasteful and appropriate tribute to an American hero, Navy SEAL Michael Monsoor, who threw himself on a grenade to save his buddies and three Iraqis. That was a great reminder of what Republicans are supposed to be about. Duty. Sacrifice. Service to country. National security, which is still an issue, regardless of how much Barack Obama wants it to go away.

Fred Thompson came out and gave the kind of speech he would have given last year, had he really wanted to be President. He told us things about John McCain, which most of us didn’t know. He has a total of seven children, including an adopted daughter who was an orphan in Bangladesh. John McCain had two opportunities to leave Vietnam, not one, and he refused both. When he arrived at the Hanoi Hilton, the kind, enlightened Vietnamese leftists left him on a cell floor with broken limbs and stab wounds, lying in his own waste because he could not move himself. Thompson described the torture McCain willingly submitted to by turning down a trip home. They broke his teeth out. They beat him repeatedly and used ropes to stretch his arms behind his back. He suffered more broken bones. To many liberals, this is simply the fitting and just consequence of having dropped bombs from an American airplane. To healthier minds, it is heart-wrenching.

Fred was great, but the speech I liked best came from Joe Lieberman. He’s not the orator Fred Thompson is, but he was the convincing bearer of several crucial messages which may swing this election. Some were unspoken, but they were still powerful.

Here’s what he was trying to convey. 1. Republicans are the only friends Israel and the Jews have, and it’s okay for Jews to vote for them. 2. We need a President who cares about national security, and who will terrify our enemies. 3. These issues are so important, even social liberals need to cross the line just this once. 4. The notion that John McCain is George Bush’s puppet is not only wrong, but absurd. 5. John McCain is willing to include Democrats in his administration.

That’s not demagoguery. Those things are all true. And the man who delivered the speech has zero credibility problems.

Lieberman also pointed out that Obama is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. He claims to be his own man, but he has never been involved in any kind of reform. That’s saying something, for a politician who worked in corrupt Chicago and then went on to the US Senate. He never crossed swords with his leaders. He never questioned the status quo. In fact, he did exactly as he was told. And in the Senate, he did virtually nothing, aside from showing up to vote once in a while.

“Change”? For Obama, the biggest change would be change itself. When it comes to change, he can’t carry Sarah Palin’s purse.

Lieberman spoke against his own best interests, which is a powerful indicator that he was sincere. It may be true that he’s expecting a Cabinet post from McCain, but right now, he’s a Senate bigwig who can use his majority-completing status to make the Democrats crawl. And he knows he may lose leverage in November, if the Democrat margin is expanded. Commentators sometimes call Lieberman “shrewd,” which is often anti-Semitic for “tricky Jew,” and they claim he’s doing all these things purely to advance his career. That would only make sense if Obama were a weak candidate, or if Republicans were expected to maintain their numbers in the Senate. Even if GOP Senate seats were safe, it would be risky, because now Lieberman has to answer to the liberal base that elected him. He may well be ousted.

I like what I’m seeing. Convention attendees seemed energetic and full of confidence, and the liberal pundits are lashing out with as much venom as they can muster, which proves they’re scared. Debates are coming up, and we already know Obama and Biden are very weak debaters. I wish we had had another Reagan up our sleeve last year, but we didn’t. And Barack Obama is Jimmy Carter without the experience. John McCain will do. Maybe he’ll get his chance.

Francine Rescued

Get Belafonte on the Line

Usually when I start blogging, I come up with a topic to talk about. Today I think I’ll just wander around.

First of all, bananas. My plantain trees are producing bananas. Which makes them banana trees. I gave some away, and I have been informed that they make excellent chips, if you slice them thin and fry them. This doesn’t make them plantains. Some bananas stand up to cooking, and some plantains can be eaten raw. It’s confusing. I’m pretty sure these are bananas. They’re easy to peel, and they taste great raw.

I’m trying to understand bananas. If I am even close to getting it right, the first bananas humans ate had big hard seeds in them. We bred the seeds out, so bananas are now sterile and have to be propagated by shoots. Before about 1960, Americans used to buy a banana variety called Gros Michel. “Fat Mike.” The bananas we now buy are Cavendish bananas. They used to be considered junk, and they were not exported. But Gros Michel bananas succumbed to a blight.

I’ll tell you right away, some of this information may be wrong. I found a site for a company that sells little banana trees by mail, and they gave another name for the bananas we see at stores. The site says this type of banana is excellent, but only if you grow them yourself. Store bananas are picked green, and they’re not as good. Now maybe the other name means the same thing as “Cavendish.” I don’t know. But it’s hard to believe that the fairly tasty bananas we see in stores were ever considered junk.

Here is more news. A blight has hit the Cavendish banana. It’s a fungus. And because Cavendish banana trees are genetically identical, there is no hope that we’ll find a resistant cultivar. So if the blight ever gets to the Americas, we will have no bananas today, forever. Yes, that’s right. Scientists are claiming it’s the end of the banana world.

I find this hard to believe. First of all, plants mutate, so I doubt all Cavendish trees are the same. Second, predictions like this almost never come true. Third, it’s not clear to me that all edible bananas come from this line. There are hundreds of different types of bananas. Some are huge. Some are small. Some are purple. The taste varies. I can’t believe they’re all going to be hit by the blight. Surely they’re not that closely related. Fourth, if we bred tasty seedless bananas once, why can’t we do it again? You see what I’m saying.

Here in Miami, we have approximately nine billion varieties of banana and plantain (different plant, but similar). If you go to a fruit market, you may see some very odd bananas. And all of them are better than regular store bananas. Are they all going to become extinct? Can you buy into that?

Here’s the proposed solution to the banana blight: genetic modification. And of course, the greenies are scared that modified bananas will give us tumors or make us explode or something. So my best guess is, poor, backward countries will get modified bananas, and we’ll do without, just like we do without Corvairs and DDT.

I tried to identify my bananas online. It’s impossible. They’re about seven inches long and 2 1/2″ thick. The flesh is very white. They’re stubby. The closest match I can find is a Hawaiian cultivar called Hua Moa, but they’re smaller.

Whatever. I’ll still eat them.

Last night I felt I needed some Haagen-Dazs. And I noticed the twenty-plus pounds of bananas on the counter. I sliced one into chunks, added strawberry Haagen-Dazs, added chocolate syrup, and went to town. These bananas are excellent with ice cream. Store bananas tend to be mealy and flavorless, by yard-banana standards. These are firm and smooth-textured, and they have a lemony kind of taste. Very nice.

I still need a plantain tree. Maybe Home Depot has one.

If you’re worried about hard times, and you live in an area where these things will grow, get yourself a couple of banana and plantain trees. You’ll have an endless supply of starch and fiber, from a very small piece of land. And they’re good for you. And boy, are they versatile. You can even make flour out of them.

Without being gross, let me assure you that fiber from bananas or plantains has fine qualities you will appreciate. You will understand what I mean, if you’ve ever made the mistake of eating two bowls of All-Bran.

What else is happening? Let’s see. The Palin kerfuffle.

I can’t believe we’re still hearing about this. You would think liberal pundits would be smart enough to tread lightly, and some are, but last night, I saw a female comedian on Larry King, gloating about the pregnancy. She was openly thrilled that Sarah Palin’s daughter had made this devastating, humiliating mistake. She made fun of teaching abstinence, saying it was clearly a great success in Wasilla. I could not believe it. Imagine being a pregnant 17-year-old and watching adults make fun of you on national TV. What ever happened to decency and compassion? Aren’t conservatives supposed to be the mean ones? We’re pretty good about things like this. We may shoot you in the face from time to time, but we won’t humiliate your children.

I’m disgusted to see TV personalities harping on the story. They hide behind the claim that it’s legitimate news. It was legitimate news when a vice presidential candidate’s wife admitted she drank rubbing alcohol, but I don’t recall panels being convened to discuss it. For that matter, I don’t recall anyone seizing on Betty Ford’s addiction to belittle Gerald Ford. And Ford was a Republican. I suppose that if Ford were in office today, and Betty admitted her problem, we’d see the same kind of cruelty. After all, we saw a lot of Steve Irwin “humor” right after he died. You can’t sink much lower than that.

Is this how desperate McCain’s enemies are? Are they so scared of a lady from Wasilla that they’re willing to torment her child in front of tens of millions of people? Is it really that hard to stay on the issues? This is like skipping diplomacy and going straight for the H-bomb. If Obama is right on the issues, and he’s capable of being a good President, he shouldn’t need this kind of help. And it has to be counterproductive. He’s smart enough to know that. He discouraged these attacks.

People will say Republicans picked on Obama’s wife. Sorry, that won’t fly. She’s an adult. She chose to inject herself into the debate. No one forced a microphone into her hand. Notice how the pundits are less interested in Cindy McCain? That’s because she doesn’t make provocative remarks, the way Michelle Obama does. If she starts, the Democrats have every right to respond. Someone show me how Sarah Palin’s daughter provoked a response.

It makes me think about things I’ve written, which I should have kept to myself.

I wonder what the teen pregnancy rate in Wasilla is, compared to New York City, where teachers pass out condoms and probably hold counseling sessions for girls who have failed to get pregnant. The sky-high AIDS rate in New York ought to tell you all you need to know about the effectiveness of the liberal approach.

I still can’t believe educators hand out condoms to children. It’s one of those things that make you wonder if you’re living in a lucid dream. In a few years, they’ll be passing out beers and buying spray paint for vandals.

Let’s move on. To sea monsters. It looks like Sweden is competing with Loch Ness. Some Swedes in need of a hobby set up a camera, trying to catch their version of Nessie, which lives in a lake the name of which I can’t identify, because the website, Storsjöodjuret (“More state-subsidized vodka, please”), is in Swedish. They have footage of something that looks like a blob of mucus caught in turbulence. The site asks the compelling question: “Vad händer just nu?” To which I gamely reply, “Clap it up, my hammies.” That’s my stock response to everything.

It sure looks fake. Maybe it’s an angry lutefisk. Never get between a lutefisk and its cubs.

I predict that this will turn out to be just as genuine as the beer-cooler Sasquatch that turned up in Georgia. It’s too bad that was a fake. Think of the beer endorsements. “Hey, Bigfoot! WASSSUUPPPPPPP!”

I’m so glad people stopped saying that. I’m pretty sure there was a point where preachers were using it to start their sermons. “WASSSUUPPPPPPP, sinners! Open your Bibles to Exodus, chapter three, verse seven…”

I got a lot of responses to my last post on religion. I want to thank everyone. I feel a lot of relief, even though I have improved to a pretty limited extent. Sometimes I feel myself about to say or do something of the sort that used to weary me in the past, and something stops me, and it makes me very glad. It’s like rejecting delivery of a time bomb. I hope that in the future, I’ll be able to do it more consistently.

I got an email from a friend yesterday, asking about another friend, who has gotten a divorce. I managed to catch myself and provide only limited details, for fear of gossiping. I know the inquiry was well-intended. But I thought it was best not to start down that road. In the past, I would have blabbed whatever I knew. I know the divorced friend wouldn’t care, but still, it’s best not to function as a local version of TMZ.

Looks like Hurricane Gustav is all washed up, which is an answer to prayer. The storm caused a number of deaths, and it damaged a great deal of property, but it also highlighted the persistent vulnerability of New Orleans, without flooding the city again. I know people who were affected by the storm aren’t feeling grateful for that, but maybe it will move the government to speed up improvements.

The GOP needs to go ahead with the convention. The usual cranks will criticize them, but the streets are dry, the Superdome is empty, the winds are gone, and it’s okay to resume normal life.

I hope Hanna continues to disappoint. The projected path is promising, in that it takes the storm away from areas that have already been pounded, and it keeps it offshore and headed into cooler water for quite some time. The farther north it goes before it makes landfall, the better. Ike is disconcerting. I hope Haiti and the DR and Cuba don’t take any more blows. The historical data suggests it will go north and vanish. That would be nice.

I’m annoyed to see weather people calling the next wave “Josephine,” when it’s still nothing but a bunch of wobbly clouds. There are some kinds of optimism we really don’t need.

What tires me is the endless sensation that hurricanes are nearby. The weather has a certain feel to it when tropical activity is going on within a few hundred miles. It feels ominous. And we get a lot of drizzle and clouds. It’s like being held at gunpoint for weeks.

Supposedly, we’re in a period where sunspots are infrequent, and that may mean the planet will cool for a number of years. If cooling means fewer hurricanes, I’m all for it.

My coffee is cold. I better publish this.

I Almost Miss Cronkite

I am thinking about the new Palin pregnancy kerfuffle. Trying to figure out where I stand.

Let’s see.

First of all, it was despicable for left-wing bloggers to attack Sarah Palin’s daughter, who is a minor. I don’t know why they always have to act like this. It doesn’t help their cause. But you can always count on them to do it, and it’s not just little-known, sparsely-read blogs. This time, once again, it’s The Daily Kos. Last time I checked, Kos was five times as big as Instapundit. The DNC invites these people to their convention. The Kos Kidz have a big annual meeting, and Democrat politicians show up, hat in hand, to beg their approval. Like Roman Senators who had to respond to invitations to have dinner with Caligula’s horse.

They claimed, with absolutely no evidence, that Palin’s daughter (whose name I am not going to use) had a baby, and that Sarah claimed it as hers, to avoid scandal. Simultaneously, other left-wing bloggers were asking whether Sarah Palin caused her son to have Down’s Syndrome, by maintaining a busy schedule as governor. Don’t worry about the inconsistency; they were just hoping something would stick.

Mrs. Palin got fed up and announced that her daughter was pregnant. Great. We have succeeded in intruding on the privacy of a young girl, at a very difficult time in her life. Her shame is now reality TV. That’s the big achievement here. She could have delivered quietly, a few months down the road, and things would have gone much easier for her. But the ruthless fringe kooks couldn’t leave her mother’s baby alone, so an announcement had to be made.

People say it’s fair to expose the daughter, because her decisions reflect on her mother’s character. That’s strange, coming from the political left. But then they criticized Mrs. Palin–the ultimate actualization of feminism’s best hopes–for not staying at home with her son, so I suppose there is no argument too hollow for them. This isn’t about Sarah Palin’s character. It’s a grotesque attempt to embarrass her, and the humiliation of her innocent daughter is acceptable collateral damage. Strangers with blogs are calling this child a whore. That’s okay, if it helps Obama.

We have no idea why the daughter allowed this pregnancy to happen. We don’t know how her mother raised her, or what kind of person the daughter is, or whether she listens to her parents. We do know that kids don’t always do what they’re brought up to do.

Maybe Sarah Palin failed her daughter. Do we really want to get into that, as a country? Should we put her on the witness stand and make her answer questions under oath? Do we ask her how much time they spend together, or whether she makes the daughter go to church, or what kind of sexual counseling the daughter received at home? None of that is going to happen, unless the liberal press is farther gone than I realize. Everyone realizes that teenagers do disappointing things. They’re not robots. You do your best; you can’t program them.

Here’s what we’re expected to conclude: Sarah Palin is a hypocrite because she goes to an Assemblies of God church, and her daughter is pregnant. I grant you, it would be easier for the daughter of a person who attends church to get pregnant, if the parent was a hypocrite. No doubt about that. But modern children don’t live in Petri dishes. They’re exposed to bad values all the time, regardless of whether their parents are good people. And sometimes those bad values win out. I would be happier if I somehow knew that all of Sarah Palin’s kids would remain virgins until they got married, but I can’t conclude that the daughter’s mistake says anything about her mother. If the rest of her daughters end up in the same boat, okay, something is wrong. But that’s not where we are right now.

From a practical standpoint, which is a little sordid, I see this as a tar baby leftists won’t be able to resist playing with. They’re going to alienate the PUMAs even more, by saying this happened because Sarah Palin went to work instead of staying home with her kids. Liberals with no sense of shame are going to make this child suffer, and the PUMAs are all women, and many of them have been where this girl is now, and they’re not going to like seeing Obama’s supporters abuse her.

Will it hurt McCain with conservatives? Hard to say. It makes you wonder about his judgment. But it doesn’t make me see Sarah Palin as less qualified. I’m just sorry this happened to her and her family. And I’m impressed that they’re confronting it, and that they’re going to support the daughter in her decision to have the baby. Leftists will say they’re forcing her to carry the baby to term, of course. And the evidence will be? Nonexistent, as usual.

There’s no doubt about it. It can’t be a good sign, when your underage daughter gets pregnant. We shouldn’t whitewash it. But smoke isn’t fire, and there is no excuse for tormenting a candidate’s minor daughter to score poll points. This story tells us very little about Sarah Palin, but it speaks volumes about the character of some of the people who oppose her. I guess that sums up how I feel.

Gustav Coverage Fails to Serve Public Interest

It’s amazing how the press can turn a blessing into a curse.

I have been glued to the screen, watching the Gustav coverage. Earlier today, it seemed that things were going very well. No hurricane-force wind for New Orleans. No real problems for our oil industry. No significant flooding. But the TV commentators managed to half-convince me that we were headed for another disaster. Fox News was the worst. I would hate to see their reaction to a true catastrophe.

All the cable networks are focusing on a levee in the northern part of the 9th Ward. The levee is twelve feet above normal water levels, and the water has risen 11.2 feet. So there are waves coming over the top of the levee. And the levee is a thin concrete wall. I’d say under a foot thick.

The Fox crew found out a barge had come loose in the Industrial Canal, which is in the area of the levee. You should have heard the hysterics. A runaway barge broke a levee during Katrina, so clearly A BREACH COULD HAPPEN AT ANY MOMENT, FLOODING THE ENTIRE NINTH WARD. I halfway expected Shepard Smith to ask for the last rites. By the way, he was hyping the storm while standing outdoors in a golf shirt.

When they first began describing the barge problem, there wasn’t a whole lot of video from the area. I’ve seen a bunch of hurricanes, so I know you don’t want to be outside while the wind is blowing. I had a mental image of twenty-foot waves, with a giant barge bucking on top of them looking for a levee to break. They said the Coast Guard was going to “attempt” to recover the barge and secure it. I wondered how they would manage to navigate.

When they showed video of the canal, the water was calm enough for a small boat. It gets worse here in the bay. And the wind was so light, no one had trouble standing. And the rain was on and off. In weather like that, getting to a barge would be no problem at all. The problem was easily solved by two tug boats, which went out and rounded the barge up.

Other reporters said there was flooding already! Homes and stop signs were underwater!

Okay, think about that. If a stop sign is underwater, how can you tell? You wouldn’t be able to see it through the dirty water. Obviously, what really happened was that water came up and covered the base of a sign. As for the houses, my bet is that a few low-lying homes have water up to their foundations.

Funny, they haven’t shown any submerged houses or signs, which is exactly what they would have done, had they had any footage. That probably tells us everything we need to know.

I saw an honest weatherman a few minutes ago. On another channel, someone was saying the new estimate for the surge went as high as fourteen feet. You can imagine how awful that would be, with an eleven-foot wall. This guy must have missed the “Please Terrify the Viewing Public” memo, because he pointed out that the eye of the storm had already passed its nearest approach to New Orleans, and that the storm was getting farther away, and that things should start improving.

I truly do not understand the ethics of a journalist who exaggerates the severity of a natural disaster. This hurricane could have been a horror, and it could also have impacted a national election. It could have been a very big deal. People all over the country were concerned. I certainly was. It’s not right for reporters and anchors to yank our chains like this. It upsets people, and it erodes the credibility of the press. If the TV heads scream every time the wind blows, who will believe them when we really have a problem?

Another thing: what is the explanation for the eleven-foot levee? You should see this thing. It would remind you of the little concrete half-walls they put between lanes of highway traffic during road work. We already know ship owners aren’t responsible enough to secure their vessels. Why build a thin levee which would give way when struck by a ship? Today the winds were something like forty miles per hour, and the water only rose eleven feet. What if the surge went over fifteen feet, as it has in other places, and the wind went to 175? What good would that little wall be? If you can make a wall a foot thick, you can make one six feet thick. If you can make it eleven feet high, you can make it twenty feet high. We’re not talking about building the Panama Canal, here. We’re talking about a few miles of wall, to save lives. Am I wrong? Is there some reason why we can’t do better? Here in Miami, we have dozens of miles of elevated highway. That took much more material and effort than a decent levee. If we can build expressways, why can’t we build levees we know will work?

What if Gustav had landed five miles east of New Orleans, with 150-mile-per-hour winds? Those levees would have been underwater, along with the rest of the city. No question. How would our government officials have explained that?

Regardless of my complaints and criticisms, it’s great to see this mess behind us. I just hope the right people are scared enough to prepare for the next Gustav.

Everyone is Happy, Except Michael Moore

Isn’t it wonderful to wake up to good news?

A few days ago, we were worried about Hurricane Gustav hitting New Orleans with high winds, in a cruel mimicry of Katrina. This morning, however, the storm came ashore a good distance away from New Orleans, and it immediately dropped to Category 2, and there is considerable doubt as to whether New Orleans will get hurricane-force winds. On top of that, Gustav missed the bulk of our oil rigs, and the drilling and refining industries are expected to rebound quickly.

Gustav is also a much smaller storm than Katrina, at the core level. While the tropical-storm-force area is as wide as Katrina’s, the width of the area in which winds are at or above hurricane strength is half as big. Tropical storms are unpleasant, but I can tell you from experience that life below 74 miles per hour is much better than life above it.

There is nothing like seeing prayers answered. This storm could have been a nightmare. But God gave us all a break. Our oil supply is fine, the levees are expected to hold, and we’re not going to see bodies floating in the streets. If things keep going the way they are now, this story could be second-page material by tomorrow morning. People’s lives could be back on track by the end of the week.

More good news for Republicans (and by extension, America): the GOP convention will go on more or less as planned. George Bush probably won’t be there, but he has been demonized to such an extent that his presence might have been a negative. The liberal press and the DNC have managed to characterize John McCain–a waterboarding critic and persistent thorn in the side of the GOP–as a Bush puppet. They’re convincing America that John McCain is Bush’s Medvedev, which is absolutely ridiculous. “Would that he were,” is all I can say. I wouldn’t say the storm prevented George Bush from going to the convention. I’d say it gave him a much-needed excuse for staying away.

I wish Bobby Jindal could be there, so the nation could see the difference between him and Kathleen Blanco, who refused to allow the National Guard into Louisiana after Katrina. But I suppose they’ve already seen the difference, as Jindal prepared for Gustav. Any governor who followed Blanco would have improved on her performance, out of self-interest, if nothing else. But it looks like Jindal has done a particularly impressive job. He oversaw the biggest evacuation in US history.

Maybe he’ll be able to sneak off for a quick speech. We need to promote this guy; if McCain loses, he’ll be running in four years. He’s what Obama would be, if Obama had a resume.

I hope the good news continues. Times don’t need to be any tougher than they already are.

One Katrina was Plenty

I hate to say it, but the global warming prophets of doom are having a good week, apart from the Sarah Palin pick. It looks like Hurricane Gustav is sure to hit the Gulf Coast, and there’s no guarantee it won’t strike New Orleans. And the approach of Tropical Storm Hanna is not comforting, either, although computer models and historical tracks indicate it probably won’t hit the US.

I feel so bad for people on the Gulf Coast. I always breathe a sigh of relief when a hurricane misses me, but I can’t stand the thought of Gustav approximating Katrina’s landfall. It’s good that Lousiana has Bobby Jindal instead of Kathleen Blanco, and it’s good that we have the benefit of hindsight, but this would still be a devastating blow.

One sad thing is that some people will be hoping for a major catastrophe, to deflect attention from the Republican convention and make Bobby Jindal look bad. I hope you’ll join me in praying for a different result. I would not want to see a major hurricane hit an American city during a Democrat convention, or at any other time. I hate to see the American people divided into camps that are pro- and anti-hurricane.

I believe you have to be careful in your prayers, when a hurricane is on the way. You can’t really expect to get results if you ask God to send it to another populated area. I always ask for things like a reduction in strength and a move away from concentrations of human beings.

The weather people don’t talk much about the size of storms. They should. You can get tracking and wind-strength information on just about any storm since the middle of the 20th century, but it can be tough, finding out how wide the storms were. Why is that? A wide storm is much worse than a small one. If you look at Katrina’s cumulative wind map, you’ll see that the storm was very bad, many miles from the center. Andrew, on the other hand, tore up Dade County and had little effect one county to the north. Katrina was big, and Andrew was small. Gustav is small at the moment. That’s a mercy. The models seem to predict a landing west of the city. If the storm stays small, that might limit damage.

A big storm can do as much damage as several small storms. They have a scale for wind strength. They should have one for diameter. Maybe they do, but I’ve never heard of it.

When I watch video from New Orleans, I see the sun shining, and I see order and calm. That’s comforting. Then I think about the difference a couple of days could make. I imagine the chaos and destruction. That breaks the spell.

Gustav killed 59 people in Haiti. It always amazes me to read casualty figures from undeveloped countries. Gustav wasn’t even a hurricane when it hit Haiti. If you look at casualty numbers for the most deadly storms in history, they’re all in places where the standard of living is low. Not one occurred in the Western Hemisphere. It seems like every time a big cyclone hits a place like Bangladesh or India, the casualties go into the thousands. The recent Burma storm is believed to have killed 138,000 people. It seems like a strong capitalist economy is the best defense against storm deaths, except in Cuba, where totalitarianism assures that the government can force people to evacuate.

Pray this thing shrinks and breaks up and moves away from cities. It would be great to see an improvement in the forecast.