There’s been a lot of talk in the national press lately about Greenwich businessman Ned Lamont’s grassroots challenge to Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. From the glowing coverage, you’d think that Lamont was running neck-and-neck with Lieberman, that the mighty incumbent of “Joe-mentum” fame is shaking in his boots because of the Little Millionaire That Could and his plucky liberal insurgency. Well, the poll numbers are out, and it turns out Lieberman’s support has indeed dropped in the last three months — by three whole percentage points! Instead of leading Lamont 68% to 13% among party members (as he was in February), Lieberman now leads by a paltry 65% to 19% margin.

Heh.

Of course, the key for Lieberman, if there’s a primary (Lamont first needs to win 15% of the party’s delegates at the state convention on May 20 — and Genghis Conn thinks this poll may hurt his quest to win over delegates — or else roughly 15,000 petition signatures, in order to force a primary), will be turnout. Lamont’s supporters are more fervent (not to say feverish :) and thus more likely to come to the polls. But c’mon… Lamont is going to have to do a little better than 19% of the general party membership if he expects to have a serious chance. Honestly, I would have expected him to be at 30% or higher, given everything I’ve been hearing. I’m pleasantly surprised at these numbers.

In other Connecticut political news, Newington’s state senator, Biagio “Billy” Ciotto, will not seek re-election.

UPDATE: On the other hand, these numbers show a significantly tighter Lieberman-Lamont race.

From the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center:

SEA LEVEL READINGS INDICATE A TSUNAMI WAS GENERATED. IT MAY HAVE BEEN DESTRUCTIVE ALONG COASTS NEAR THE EARTHQUAKE EPICENTER. … NO TSUNAMI THREAT EXISTS FOR OTHER COASTAL AREAS IN THE PACIFIC ALTHOUGH SOME OTHER AREAS MAY EXPERIENCE SMALL SEA LEVEL CHANGES. THE TSUNAMI WARNING IS CANCELLED.

UPDATE: It appears that everyone is OK:

“We have no reports of injury or fatalities or of structural damage throughout the (Tonga Islands) group,� [Mali’u Takai, deputy director of the Tonga’s National Disaster Office] said. “There are broken windows in a few houses, but that’s about it.�

That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news:

A powerful earthquake struck early Thursday near the South Pacific nation of Tonga, prompting tsunami warnings for as far away as Fiji and New Zealand. But the warning never reached Tonga…

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said its first alert went out 16 minutes after the earthquake but was not received in Tonga because of a power failure there.

Gerard Fryer, the center’s acting director, said “there was problem in Tonga, where there was a power outage and they didn’t get our initial message.�

Fryer said the center needs to work with Tonga to correct the problem. He said he did not know whether the power failure was caused by the earthquake.

Mali’u Takai, deputy director of the Tonga’s National Disaster Office, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that no warning was received.

“Nobody got a warning through the emergency satellite system in our meteorological office,� Takai said. “Judging by the location of the epicenter we would have been caught out without any warning at all because of the system’s malfunction.�

Of course, one would hope that residents would have the good sense to seek higher ground immediately after feeling the effects of a 7.9 earthquake. When you’re on an ocean island, a massive earthquake should itself be considered a “tsunami warning.” Education and common sense should make that a reality. It’s for the distant areas where people can’t feel the earthquake that a tsunami warning system is the most pivotal.

(Previous post here.)

8.0 earthquake in Pacific. More to come momentarily.

UPDATE, 12:31 PM: Earthquake hit near Tonga, according to MSNBC.

UPDATE, 12:33 PM: And a tsunami watch for Hawaii, per CNN. [CORRECTION, 12:43 PM: It’s a tsunami “advisory,” not a tsunami “watch.” Moreover, according to the official bulletin, “Based on all available data, there is no destructive tsunami threat to Hawaii. However…some coastal areas in Hawaii could experience small sea level changes and strong or unusual currents lasting up to several hours. The estimated time such effects might begin is 1133 AM HST [5:44 PM Eastern time].”]

Here’s the official bulletin:

IT IS NOT KNOWN THAT A TSUNAMI WAS GENERATED. THIS WARNING IS BASED ONLY ON THE EARTHQUAKE EVALUATION. AN EARTHQUAKE OF THIS SIZE HAS THE POTENTIAL TO GENERATE A DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMI THAT CAN STRIKE COASTLINES NEAR THE EPICENTER WITHIN MINUTES AND MORE DISTANT COASTLINES WITHIN HOURS. AUTHORITIES SHOULD TAKE APPROPRIATE ACTION IN RESPONSE TO THIS POSSIBILITY. THIS CENTER WILL MONITOR SEA LEVEL DATA FROM GAUGES NEAR THE EARTHQUAKE TO DETERMINE IF A TSUNAMI WAS GENERATED AND ESTIMATE THE SEVERITY OF THE THREAT.

Details on the earthquake here.

UPDATE, 12:36 PM: According to CNN, a “blip” has been detected that could indicate an actual tsunami wave now moving through the ocean.

If a tsunami was indeed generated, it would be expected to hit Fiji at around 1713Z (1:13 PM Eastern time) and Gisborne, New Zealand around 1821Z (2:21 PM Eastern time).

UPDATE, 12:52 PM: CNN’s reporting on this is terrible. They just said that the esimated time for the tsunami to hit Fiji has now passed, but according to the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, that’s not true; the estimate time of arrival is about 12 minutes away. They also said, “at the earliest, it would be midnight” before anything hits Hawaii — but first of all, that’s wrong, it would be around noon, not around midnight; and second of all, it’s not just wrong, it’s absurd… it’s 6:51 AM in Hawaii now, and it doesn’t take 18 hours for a tsunami wave to travel halfway across the Pacific! Sheesh!

UPDATE, 12:55 PM: David Applegate, U.S. Geological Survey says earthquake was in a subduction zone, which is favorable to tsunami generation.

UPDATE, 12:57 PM: The “blip” was detected at the island of Niue, just northeast of Tonga (map here). CNN reported a few minutes ago that the scientists should know by around the “top of the hour” whether it was a real tsunami or not. Meanwhile, the expected arrival time in Fiji has been adjusted slightly, to 1704Z (1:04 PM Eastern time). There is no longer an expected New Zealand arrival time listed on the latest bulletin; not sure what that means. Also, CNN is saying the earthquake has been downgraded from 8.0 to 7.8.

UPDATE, 1:09 PM: Applegate points out that the earthquake is much less powerful than the December 2004 “monster,” which was between 9.1 and 9.3 (remember that the Richter scale is logarithmic), so any possible tsunami would probably be less severe.

On the other hand, it should be noted that it’s the middle of the night in Fiji and New Zealand, so people there may not be aware of this.

UPDATE, 1:12 PM: CNN’s coverage is absolutely abysmal. Having earlier stated that the possible tsunami landfall time in Fiji had passed, they then reported that it’s more than an hour away. Both statements were entirely wrong. I have now switched to Fox, which seems to actually have the ability to fact-check its time zones before stating misinformation on the air.

UPDATE, 1:15 PM: Fox’s expert is reporting that “most of the energy” from the tsunami/earthquake seems to be pointed east-southeast, away from Fiji and New Zealand.

UPDATE, 1:16 PM: “No immediate reports of damage, tsunami” in Tonga, according to Tonga police, Fox reports.

FINAL UPDATE, 1:44 PM: The tsunami warning has been cancelled. See new post above.

Tsunami warnings issued for Fiji and New Zealand after earthquake measuring a magnitude of about 8.0 shakes southern Pacific Ocean. Visit CNN for the latest.

The first time I ever blogged about the grave hurricane threat to New Orleans — not during Katrina, but during Hurricane Ivan in 2004 — one of the details that caught my attention was the fire ants:

Stranded survivors will have a dangerous wait even after the storm passes. Emergency officials worry that energized electrical wires could pose a threat of electrocution and that the floodwater could become contaminated with sewage and with toxic chemicals from industrial plants and backyard sheds. Gasoline, diesel fuel and oil leaking from underground storage tanks at service stations may also become a problem, corps officials say.

A variety of creatures — rats, mice and nutria, poisonous snakes and alligators, fire ants, mosquitoes and abandoned cats and dogs — will be searching for the same dry accommodations that people are using.

As we know, much of that came true when Katrina hit… but it turns out the fire ants didn’t fare so well:

Finally, a silver lining in all of that salt water that flooded parts of Louisiana during hurricanes Katrina and Rita: A lot of pesky fire ants died.

The invasive little bugs, which bite with a real sting and often push “goodâ€? ants out of an area, apparently don’t mix well with salt water, according to findings by LSU Agriculture Center entomologist and Professor Linda Hooper-Bui and her researchers. …

Fire ants are normally very adaptive to the environment. When it floods in their native ranges in South America, they will create a floating “ball� in hopes some will survive, Hooper-Bui said. Essentially, some sacrifice their lives so their fellow ants can float on top of their carcasses.

In checking populations after the storms, researchers from the Red Ant Laboratory at LSU found a dearth of fire ant mounds in flooded areas. “We just didn’t expect to see no fire ants,â€? Hooper-Bui said. …

Undergraduate researchers Andy Fulks said he has found that in concentrations of 3 percent or greater salt in the water (typical of seawater), the fire ant ball reaction doesn’t seem to work. The ants will ball, but not for long. They slowly sink and drown. Lower concentrations of salt act slower, Fulks said.

“That’s pretty dramatic,â€? Hooper-Bui said as she watched a ball of fire ants floating in a bucket of salty water quickly disintegrate, sink and drown. In a freshwater bucket next to it, the ball was still working. …

She and Fulks are still trying to figure out why the ant balls don’t work in saltwater. It could be a chemical reaction, such as the salt drawing moisture from their bodies, or it could be a change in the water surface tension that stops the ants from floating.

Interesting! (Hat tip: Charles.)

The Washington State quarter voting has concluded, and now that the initial fraudulent flood of pro-RoboWhale votes has been discounted, the winner is the choice I endorsed in the first place: the giant salmon preparing to eat Mount Rainier.

Heh. Hooray!

It was a close vote — though not quite as close as that other fishy Washington state election :) — with the mountain-devouring salmon design defeating the boring map design, 45% to 41%. RoboWhale (a.k.a. Whale Plane), the favorite of the old-people’s-medicine-eating Internet robots who hijacked the vote early last month, received just 14% of the vote. (”Fraud!” cried the maddened robots, and the echo answered, “Fraud!”)

More here. Technically, the vote is non-binding. Gov. Christine Gregoire will “consider the results before selecting a winner,” according to an earlier article.

Barry Bonds hit home run number 712* against San Diego on Tuesday, and is now within two* of tying Babe Ruth for second* on the all-time list.

*I think the asterisks speak for themselves, really.

In the next few days and weeks, I strongly suspect that the growing political consensus will be that the “Day without an Immigrant” march/boycott backfired. I list the reasons why, in no particular order:

1. Americans will not appreciate the association with May Day, communism, ANSWER, other left-wing groups like MECHA, and groups that go around shouting, “We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us!”

2. It’s one thing to wave your country’s flag at the World Cup or on Cinco de Mayo; it’s quite another to wave the Mexican flag when you’re marching to demand citizenship in America.

3. Americans are turned off by the entitlement mentality these marchers were exhibiting; most Americans’ ancestors came here humbly and doing everything they could to be in good graces with the law and to secure a better future for their children. In contrast, these illegal immigrants were boycotting work, pulling their kids out of school, and demanding they be handed a piece of the citizenship pie after cutting in line ahead of all the legal immigrants. Americans do not appreciate feeling like they must “appease”, although certain politicians are more than glad to offer promises of government largesse in exchange for political support and votes (this is typical of liberals, but increasingly Republicans like Bush are engaging in this mentality as well).

4. Americans don’t respond positively to protests and boycotts. The Civil Rights movement led by Dr. MLK Jr. was an exception: although the majority of white Americans did not support ending segregation and granting equal rights to blacks at first, they were forced to see the brutal evil of Jim Crow in the South on TV. MLK Jr. said all the right things and asked for opportunity and equality, couching his demands in religion and appeals to our nation’s highest ideals. No other major movement has followed that tactic, and thus no other major movement has gained the implicit support of “the silent majority”. The silent majority were turned off by the Vietnam protesters and and reelected Nixon in a landslide; the silent majority defiantly crushed the anti-globalization movement in the 1990s; the silent majority only gave more support to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and rallied behind President Bush when protesters filled the streets; and the silent majority will now turn against yesterday’s protesters and deal a fatal blow to their goals. Solid public support will now swing in favor of strong border enforcement, more employer crackdowns, and a strict path to citizenship (if any form of amnesty is accepted at all).

5. The boycott failed in its stated purpose: To show that “a day without an immigrant” would hurt the U.S. economy. Not only were the economic effects slight, the areas hardest hit were the ethnic immigrant enclaves, as many stores that serve and hire members of those communities were closed and/or lost money. As for the rest of society, Americans saw traffic ease, commutes shorten, 911 calls decrease, emergency rooms empty, and gang activities quiet down. For American educators in the inner cities, class sizes were advantageously smaller for the day, and the students who came to school were disproportionately more eager to succeed and learn than their peers whose parents pulled them from class. For most average Americans, yesterday had precisely the opposite effect of that intended by the organizers.

Republicans have an excellent chance here to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat and pass immigration reform that heightens our nation’s security, severely cracks down on the incentives to come here illegally by going after employers, and bring 10-20 million people out of the shadows in a way that pays for itself by making illegal immigrants not only earn their citizenship, but pay monetarily for the right to live here, receive government services, and/or remit income to their families abroad. The path to citizenship is key: Make the process difficult enough and bound with enough strings, and you’ll separate the wheat from the chaff. Simultaneously though, Republicans would be doing this nation a great disservice if they did not overhaul completely the process by which we let in immigrants legally. A great deal of face can be saved if Republicans do these two key steps:

1. Show their pro-immigration bonafides by making legal immigration much easier, smoother, fair, and better designed to help strengthen America; and

2. Make the path to citizenship for illegals sufficiently difficult that only true Americans will take that path, humbly and willingly paying restitution for coming here illegally for the right to be a part of our great nation.

Anything short of those two options risks ceding the middle to Democrats who would gladly offer amnesty to illegals and change the Pledge of Allegiance to Spanish to pick up a quick 10 million votes nationwide. Republicans are also at risk of alienating their base, and when the base doesn’t show up to the polls, GOP victories like we saw in 2002 and 2004 simply will not continue in 2006 and 2008. Doing the first step will satisfy the concerns of the American middle, while the latter will craft a balance between the sympathetic Center with the angry anti-illegal immigration base of the GOP.

Buffalo has taken a 5-0 lead on Philadelphia, less than eight minutes into the second period. So, barring an epic comeback by the Flyers, the Sabres will win the series in six games, 4-2, on the road — the first road win for either team. That said, it wouldn’t be the first time a Buffalo sports team has lost in utterly heartbreaking fashion, so let’s all knock on wood repeatedly now, shall we?

The Flyers just pulled goalie Robert Esche out of the game. I was impressed that the Philly fans, obviously realizing that their season is almost certainly over, cheered him when he left the ice — recognizing his success during the season instead of booing him for his poor performance tonight.

Go Sabres!

UPDATE: Sabres win, 7-1! Bring on Ottawa!

UPDATE 2: Here’s Bfloblog’s wrap-up of the game.

Also tonight, the Carolina Hurricanes — or, as I like to call them, the Hartford Whalers of Raleigh — clinched their first-round series in six games as well. If the Whalers Hurricanes beat the Devils and the Sabres beat the Senators, Buffalo would play Hartford Carolina in the Eastern Conference finals. I would root for Buffalo, but with a slightly heavy heart. LET’S GO WHALE! :)

…but apparently there is, because Martin’s is worried about people going to the polls drunk:

Heh. Blue laws are silly.

UPDATE: Meijer had a similar sign… though theirs had one major flaw:

Apparently those “higher standards” don’t apply to spelling. :)

More than eight months after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin outlined an evacuation plan for his city on Tuesday.

Heh.

You’d think this development might remind Nagin’s constituents, who will decide on May 20 whether to re-elect him, that he didn’t seem to have an evacuation plan in place last August. I repeat: this is a guy whose lawyers were literally researching the legal ramifications of mandatory evacuations 36 hours before Katrina hit, even though the threat of a catastrophic, city-destroying hurricane had been anticipated for years. This is a guy who had to be interrupted during dinner and urged to call the National Hurricane Center on the Saturday night before the storm, apparently because he wasn’t in constant communication with them all along (?!?). This is a guy who, against all reason and logic (and contemporaneous urging on this blog), waited until 24 hours before landfall to order an evacuation, despite reams of studies showing that it would take 72 hours to empty his city. This is a guy who had no apparent strategy for helping people without private transportation get out of the city, even though everyone knew that thousands of such people existed, and even though his city had hundreds of school buses at its disposal that could have been used to carry those people out of the danger zone. (It’s useful at this point to remember that, in the true worst-case scenario, nearly all of those homes in the Ninth Ward would have been entirely underwater, and nearly all of those people who took shelter in their attics would have drowned long before they had a chance to take shelter at the Convention Center and blame the feds for taking so long to bring them aid.)

Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that Nagin had “no apparent streategy”; his strategy was to tell those people: “Go to the Superdome, which we think can withstand the winds, but we’re not really sure. There won’t be electricity, running water, a functional sewage system, or adequate food or water, but you’ll probably be better off there than in your homes. Probably.”

As I said before, it’s absolutely unbelieveable to me that the residents of New Orleans are seriously considering re-electing the mayor who fiddled while their city drowned. If Nagin wins, I think we will officially be able to declare, once and for all, that accountability is dead in this country.

All that said, it’s truly excellent that New Orleans now has a better plan in place, especially with the official start of hurricane season less than a month away. In particular, I’m happy to see that Mayor Nagin has learned from his mistake in not getting help from Amtrak. Under the new plan:

“Amtrak trains will also be used for evacuation purposes, which we’re really excited about,” Nagin said.

The new plan “relies more on buses and trains and eliminates the Superdome and Convention Center as shelters.” Good. Another excellent and important development: “In the future, evacuees will be allowed to bring pets with them [on evacuation buses] as long as they have some type of cage to safely put them in.” That won’t just save animal lives, it will save human lives, because some people simply will not leave their pets behind, no matter the danger.

But although this new plan sounds great (assuming they actually implement it when the time comes, unlike their previous plan, such as it was), it’s truly a tragedy that they didn’t have an adequate plan last August — and it’s not forgivable on the basis that “hindsight is 20/20.” As I said, the threat of a storm like Katrina (or far worse) was long anticipated and feared, and New Orleans’s previous “plan” was self-evidently inadequate. Its inadequacy didn’t just become apparent because it didn’t work; the plan, as implemented, obviously didn’t deal with the serious problems that everyone knew existed. If the plan’s flaws only became apparent to the general public in retrospect, that’s because officials lied about the plan to hide its flaws. City officials get credit for doing a good job with the traffic problems — the contraflow worked very well — but they did absolutely nothing of significance to help those without private transportation.

I realize that my harping on this point, more than eight months later, may rub some people the wrong way, seeing as how New Orleans has seemingly learned from its mistakes, and the “blame game” is out of fashion these days. But I’m sorry, I believe in accountability, and I just can’t forgive that easily when the mistakes manifestly should never have been made in the first place, and those mistakes had very serious consequences, including the deaths of scores — maybe hundreds — of people.

P.S. Bayou View has a good post about the new evacuation plan and the future of the Gulf Coast.

(more…)

George Wallace, 1963: “I say: segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

Kwame Kilpatrick, 2006: “There will be affirmative action here today. There will be affirmative action here tomorrow and there will be affirmative action in our state forever.”

First of all, isn’t the whole point of affirmative action to move our society to the point where affirmation action is no longer necessary? Even strong supporters of affirmative action shouldn’t want it to be around “forever,” should they? And anyway, if you’re going to defend a policy which is supposed to fight discrimination, but which is perceived by many as perpetuating discrimination, channeling George Wallace doesn’t seem like the best idea. Indeed, defending affirmative action by echoing a famous pro-segregation speech is about as effective as defending Joe Lieberman by calling him an elephant.

Ah, well, maybe Kilpatrick’s judgment is off because he’s upset about the Red Wings.

(Hat tip: Opinion Journal.)

Aww.

Heh.

The Detroit Red Wings, the #1 seed in the Western Conference* and hockey’s best team during the regular season, were eliminated from the playoffs last night by the #8 seed Edmonton Oilers. The Red Wings led the series 2-0, but lost four straight games to fall in 6. They also led last night’s game, 2-0 at the start of the third period and 3-2 with four minutes left… but still managed to lose, 4-3. The Oilers are the seventh #8 seed to pull a first-round stunner in the NHL, and the first since 2002.
Kevin at Bfloblog writes: “I like Edmonton, and they seem like the kind of city that Buffalo would get along with.” Heh. Them crazy Albertans probably spent all night oot at the bars celebrating, eh? :)

Tonight: the Eastern Conference’s #4-seeded Buffalo Sabres try to eliminate the Philadelphia Flyers in Game 6 of that series. In anticipation of which, Becky offers the Top Ten reasons Philly is going down. Gametime is 7pm.

Meanwhile, in the NBA, the #6 seed L.A. Clippers beat Carmelo Anthony and the #3 seed Denver Nuggets, 101-83, to win the series in 5 games — the Clippers’ first playoff series victory in 30 years. (They were the Buffalo Braves back then.) If the #7 seed Lakers, who lead the #2 seed Phoenix Suns 3-1 thanks to Kobe Bryant’s heroics, can win that series, the Clippers will face the Lakers in a Battle of L.A. in the second round. Heh!

*Since when is Detroit in the “west”?