I’m not sure how long this will last but it might be good for a laugh until Gustav hits. Unfortunately for these guys, however, riding out Gustav in Houma probably won’t be good for any laughs. You might be able to find additional video here if this feed stops.
The compassionate one shows his true colors:
Sometime you really have wonder at what cost some are willing to see their political ideology advanced.
To liberal documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, the bounds are seemingly endless. Moore has made a recent career out of attacking President George W. Bush, bashing conservatives and criticizing business. His latest outrage occurred on MSNBC’s August 29 “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and when he commented about the coincidental timing of an unfortunate disaster – the potential for Hurricane Gustav to make landfall at the beginning of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.
“I was just thinking, this Gustav is proof that there is a God in heaven,” Moore said, laughing. “To have it planned at the same time – that it would actually be on its way to New Orleans for day one of the Republican Convention, up in the Twin Cities – at the top of the Mississippi River.”
Thankfully, it looks like Cuba’s evacuation prevented the kind of massive casualties one would usually expect in a storm of this magnitude:
Strong gusts of wind over 340-km/hour were felt in the Paso Real de San Diego zone after the hurricane hard hit the Los Palacios municipality; although there is also considerable damage in other areas like Candelaria, San Cristobal and Bahia Honda. The hurricane’s strong winds are also being felt in the province capital city and other localities.
The Provincial Defense Council insists on the protection of the population in order to avoid human losses. More than 147,900 people were evacuated in Pinar del Rio, most of them went to the homes of neighbours and relatives as is usual among Cubans who always show their solidarity in the face of hurricanes.
And Gustav could strengthen before hitting the Gulf Coast…
Go play the loop. The scale and power of this growing hurricane is amazing, and if you live on the Gulf Coast, quite terrifying.
New Orleans will be virtually empty before Gustav strikes:
“I am announcing today mandatory evacuation of New Orleans starting 8am Sunday on the West bank,” Nagin said at a press conference.
“We want everybody… we want 100 per cent evacuation. If you decide to stay, you are on your own.”
“This is the mother of all storms,” Nagin said. “This storm is so powerful and growing more powerful every day that I’m not sure we’ve seen anything like it.”
Nagin estimated that less than half of the city’s population has left despite days of dire warnings.
“This is the real deal,” Nagin said. “Riding this storm out would be one of the biggest mistakes you could make in your life.”
Nagin said police, fire and other emergency personnel are being pulled from the city to safer areas. A “skeleton crew” of fewer than 50 city workers will be left behind, according to officials.
New Orleans is still dangerously vulnerable:
Though the city is more aware of the hurricane danger now than it was then, unfortunately – even scandalously – New Orleans is not as prepared as it ought to be.
A recent yearlong Associated Press investigation found that many New Orleanians have a false sense of how secure their city really is behind rebuilt levees.
Though there have been some improvements, an enormous amount of the necessary levee work remains undone and seriously behind schedule. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, whose faulty levee-building helped cause the Katrina disaster, has over the past three years put in drainage pumps that wouldn’t work and failed reviews by the National Research Council, among other shortcomings. The Corps has high hopes for its efforts, but hope won’t stop a rising storm tide.
It is hard to believe New Orleans remains so vulnerable after Katrina revealed how city, state and federal officials, as well as the people who kept electing them, wasted decades to build defenses against the killer hurricane everyone knew was bound to come.
But here we are, three years after Katrina, with the city still undefended beyond rudimentary repair work. The AP investigation made clear that the city’s crisis today is also the fault of business people, activists and others who don’t seem to grasp the urgency of their situation.
I was in New Orleans in March of this year and couldn’t believe what an absolute mess the city was outside of the French Quarter. If it takes the dirty side of a cat 5 hurricane the damage will be incomprehensible.
Texas is not alone. There are 65,000 troops on standby along the Gulf Coast:
Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said there are 65,000 guardsmen on standby across the region.
“Any response required will be rapid and effective,” Gen. Blum said during a press conference at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters in Washington.
Other resources are pouring into staging areas from around the country:
Ambulance staff and equipment from North Dakota and Minnesota are on their way to the Gulf Coast to provide emergency response capacity to the areas likely to be impacted by Hurricane Gustav.
“Five ambulances and 22 people left late Thursday evening,” said Randy Fischer, operations director for Ringdahl EMS. “We took one ambulance and three people from our Jamestown operation, one ambulance and three people from Lisbon and the rest from our operations in Minnesota.”
Fischer said Ringdahl EMS is under contract to American Medical Response and was notified Thursday morning of a potential deployment of what is referred to as a strike team. The team is traveling to a staging area at San Antonio, Texas.
Remember that all of these resources will likely be useless to you during the storm itself if you decided to stay and are caught in it’s path. These folks will be picking up the pieces after the storm has moved on.
The National Hurricane Center’s 5 AM update is, as expected, was full of bad news:
GUSTAV HAS BEEN RAPIDLY INTENSIFYING DURING THE OVERNIGHT HOURS. SATELLITE IMAGES INDICATE THAT AN EYE IS BECOMING VISIBLE AND DEEP CONVECTION SURROUNDING THE EYE IS NOW VERY INTENSE. THE CENTRAL PRESSURE IS DOWN TO 965 MB…A DROP OF ABOUT 24 MB IN 24 HOURS. THE MAXIMUM FLIGHT LEVEL WINDS REPORTED BY THE AIR FORCE CREW WERE 100 KT AROUND 6Z… CORRESPONDING TO ABOUT 90 KT AT THE SURFACE. HOWEVER THE SATELLITE PRESENTATION HAS CONTINUED TO IMPROVE…THUS THE INITIAL INTENSITY IS INCREASED CONSERVATIVELY TO 95 KT. OBJECTIVE DVORAK T-NUMBERS ARE MUCH HIGHER AND THE NEXT AIRCRAFT PASS THROUGH GUSTAV COULD FIND A MAJOR HURRICANE.
FURTHER INTENSIFICATION IS EXPECTED FOR THE NEXT DAY OR SO WHILE THE SYSTEM TRAVERSES THE EXTREMELY WARM AND DEEP WATERS OF THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA AND SOUTHERN GULF OF MEXICO. HOWEVER…BY 48 HOURS…ALMOST ALL OF THE GLOBAL MODELS SHOW AN INCREASE IN VERTICAL WIND SHEAR NEAR GUSTAV. IN ADDITION…SINCE THE LOOP CURRENT IS SOUTH OF ITS TYPICAL LOCATION…THE HURRICANE WILL BE MOVING OVER WATERS THAT ARE NOT NEARLY AS CONDUCIVE FOR
STRENGTHENING AS THEY COULD BE. THESE TWO FACTORS WILL HOPEFULLY WEAKEN THE STORM PRIOR TO U.S. LANDFALL. HOWEVER…GUSTAV IS EXPECTED TO BE A LARGE AND DANGEROUS HURRICANE AND THE NHC FORECAST CONTINUES TO SHOW GUSTAV AS A MAJOR HURRICANE AT LANDFALL.THE INITIAL MOTION ESTIMATE IS 310/10. A MID-LEVEL RIDGE FROM THE WESTERN ATLANTIC TO NORTHERN FLORIDA IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE MOVING THE HURRICANE TO THE NORTHWEST FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS. THEREAFTER…A RIDGE OVER THE OHIO VALLEY SHOULD CAUSE A GRADUAL LEFTWARD BEND IN THE TRACK AS GUSTAV APPROACHES THE NORTHERN GULF COAST. MOST OF THE GUIDANCE IS IN GOOD AGREEMENT ON THIS SCENARIO EXCEPT FOR THE UKMET/HWRF…WHICH TURN THE SYSTEM JUST OFFSHORE. THESE TWO MODELS ARE SLOWER AND TO THE LEFT OF MOST OF THE TRACK GUIDANCE…WHICH ALLOWS A RIDGE TO FORM OVER TEXAS TO TURN THE STORM. THE OFFICIAL FORECAST WILL STAY WITH THE MAJORITY OF THE GUIDANCE AND IS BASICALLY AN UPDATE TO THE PREVIOUS PACKAGE. GUSTAV WILL LIKELY SLOW DOWN SIGNIFICANTLY IN THE LONGER-TERM…WHICH COULD CAUSE A CONSIDERABLE FLOODING THREAT OVER LOUISIANA OR TEXAS.
But just an hour later, in a 6 AM special update, the news got worse:
DATA FROM AN AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT GUSTAV CONTINUES TO RAPIDLY STRENGTHEN AND NOW HAS MAXIMUM WINDS NEAR 115 MPH…185 KM/HR WITH HIGHER GUSTS. THIS MAKES GUSTAV A DANGEROUS CATEGORY THREE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE…THE SECOND MAJOR HURRICANE OF THE 2008 ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON.
If you live on the upper Texas coast or in Louisiana you absolutely need to start preparing today if you haven’t started already. Gustav is almost certainly going to cause significant damage and loss of life wherever it strikes.
I couldn’t agree more:
Today is the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s catastrophic hit on the Louisiana/Mississippi/Alabama coast. Unfortunately, I think that people living in New Orleans should mark the anniversary of Katrina by getting the heck out of the city. You live at the bottom of a bowl, ten or so feet below sea level. This is not natural. Nature wants to fill up this bowl with huge quantities of Gulf of Mexico sea water. There is a storm capable of doing that bearing down on you. If you live in New Orleans, I suggest you take a little Labor Day holiday–sooner, rather than later, to beat the rush–and get out of town. Gustav is going to come close to you, and there’s no sense messing with a major hurricane capable of pushing a Category 3 storm surge to your doorstep. Don’t test those Category 3 rated–but untested–levees. Conventional pre-Katrina wisdom suggested that the city needed 72 hours to evacuate. With the population about half of the pre-Katrina population, that lead time is about 60 hours. With Gustav likely to bring tropical storm force winds to the city by Monday afternoon, that means that tonight is a good time to start evacuating–Saturday morning at the latest. Voluntary evacuations have already begun, which is a good idea.
As I said earlier expect nothing but bad news from here on out. All signs are pointing towards an incredibly dangerous storm:
Visible satellite loops continue to show a well-organized and intensifying storm that is growing larger in size. Upper-level outflow is established in all quadrants and is growing. Low-level spiral bands are multiplying and intensifying, and the amount and intensity of Gustav’s heavy thunderstorms are steadily increasing. A well-defined eye has appeared, and Gustav appears poised to enter a phase of rapid intensification. Radar from Pilon, Cuba shows the developing spiral bands of Gustav quite well. Dry air is not evident anywhere close to Gustav.
The update was just released:
DATA FROM AN AIR FORCE RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT INDICATE THAT GUSTAV HAS AGAIN BECOME A HURRICANE WITH MAXIMUM WINDS NEAR 75 MPH…120 KM/HR.
That probably signals the end of any good news. It should only get worse from here on out.
The Governor came out strong:
“Senator, I am honored to be chosen as your running mate. I will be honored to serve next to the next president of the United States,” Palin said, joined on stage by her husband and five children ranging in age from 18 years to five months.
“As governor, I’ve stood up to the old politics as usual,” she said. “This is a moment when principle and political independence matter.”
Ed Rollins calls the selection of Palin “brilliant”:
The “why” is she is a governor and outside the Beltway. Conservatives love her and she shares John McCain’s value system. She is also known for taking on the establishment and ethics is her forte.
She defeated the longtime senator and Republican governor in a primary and then went on and defeated the former Democratic governor.
I don’t believe people vote for vice president but only for president. That said, I think she is every bit as good a choice as Biden. Alaska has three electoral votes and so does Delaware — so that part ends up being a wash.
I think the potential for her to attract women voters is immense. And I am betting, win or lose or draw, she is a future star of a party in desperate need of young people and women role models.
And by the end of this campaign, she too will be a celebrity and her life will never be the same again. I hope that’s all for the good.
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