Monthly Archives: July 2008

Baby Barry and the surge

There’s a lot of teeth gnashing in the conservative blogosphere over BB’s tap dancing around the question of whether he should have backed the surge, given its success in Iraq. I watched the cBS video here and, though I don’t care much for his politics, I have to say his answer is no more than what any politician, who didn’t wish to step down from his earlier judgement, would do. He didn’t put down the troops, as some are suggesting. He acknowleged their success, he just questioned the surge strategy itself.

On the contrary, the shift in military strategy, from large unit fighting to establishing lasting community security was almost more important than the additional manpower. As Mac says it’s definitely the way to win in Afghanistan, as well. It’s just harder there because the people have fewer resources to fall back on, and the terrain is more difficult, with communities more isolated. And with advisers like Gen. McPeak, Barry might just go back to trying to win cheaply, with bombing.

UPDATE:  This, however (scroll to the bottom of the post) is a lie, plain and simple. Why it’s called a gaffe is beyond me. Politicians tell gaffes. Ordinary people tell lies. But to me, Baby Barry told a lie, to make himself look good. Instead, he looks very, very bad. See if you don’t agree.

Brownsville radar

Here’s the very best view of Hurricane Dolly to watch today, and local stations to check on for news and weather. The Brownsville Herald is updating quickly.

UPDATE:  By 9:30 a.m., tornadoes were already popping up on radar west of Corpus Christi. By 1 p.m., Dolly had grown to a category 2 hurricane, its eyewall was moving ashore a bit north of Brownsville and it was pounding the coastline with hundred mph winds.

Texian Macabre

Overloaded with antique adjectives and enough typos to make an honest proofreader weep, this narrative Texas history (subtitle: The Melancholy Tale of a Hanging in Early Houston) by renowned historian Stephen L. Hardin is nevertheless an entertaining look at the mudhole and (yellow) fever swamp that was the Republic’s first capital. Gary S. Zaboly’s gritty drawings–especially his bird’s eye view map (apparently unavailable on the Web) of the squalid little town on sluggish Buffalo Bayou–complement the period photographs of the major players. It’s a view of early Texas that chauvanistic natives would rather outsiders didn’t see (such as the shack two-room clapboard shanty that was President Sam Houston’s first executive mansion) and a caution that even battlefield heroics can’t guarantee a happy postwar life. Get a copy and be appalled, amused and advised.

Dolly: Goodbye Texas, Hello Mexico

I’ve exhausted the easy rhymes on Tropical Storm Dolly, which is finally nudging hurricane status at seventy-four mph but seems headed for northern Mexico instead of southern Texas. But the right quandrant of a storm is the hardiest and so the Rio Grande Valley will get the worst of whatever she has when coming ashore sometime tomorrow. In Cameron County they’re getting up the plywood and preparing for flooding. Looks like Central Texas will get no rain at all, not even enough wind to worry about, unless one of the tornadoes these things often spawn should wander up our way. Which is doubtful.

UPDATE:  The LCRA’s Bob Rose thinks we’ll get some rain, anyhow: "Rain amounts will be fairly low, generally around 0.5 inch to as high as about 1 inch.  The remnants of Dolly are forecast to track west and dissipate over the mountains of northern Mexico Friday into Saturday.  For our region, the chance for rain will decrease beginning Friday and weather conditions will return to hot and dry this weekend."

Lollygagging Dolly

It’s beginning to look more and more like Dolly will go in near the mouth of the Rio Grande, about where the hurricane center originally had it pegged. So agrees Eric Berger at the Chron. And maybe only barely a minimal, category one, hurricane, she’s been so weak so far at just fifty mph. That would be good news for most on the Texas coast, but bring us less rain than we might otherwise get to cool off our long string of hundred degree days. Heck, I even have the landscapers coming tomorrow to trim one of the back forty’s live oaks where its branches are dragging on the rancho’s roof, to save the shingles, if there were high winds from the storm’s remnants coming inland. Looks like I jumped the gun. But we’ll know more about that tomorrow.

Inconvenient Truth

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Via Rene’s Apple.

Sex in public

Why do people have sex in public places? Because it’s titillating and they can–unless they’re in Dubai. That’s why the practice is a staple of the porn sites. I admit to a tryst in a canoe under Washington D.C.’s Fourteenth Street Bridge at rush hour many years ago. I never was able to make my goal, however, of an airliner’s lavatory at cruise altitude. I’m too old and slow and creaky for it now.

Via Instapundit.