Mickey Kaus: “Of course, at this point only artificial conventions of objectivity prevent MSM journalists from openly acknowledging that Kerry has no hope of winning the presidency. He’s a dead man who doesn’t know it, a political zombie refighting a lost campaign by refighting his role in a lost war, long after both conflicts are over.”

John Kerry continues to believe, apparently, that he has some sort of credibility as a potential 2008 candidate because he “almost won” in 2004. But that’s bogus — Kerry almost won because Bush was unpopular, not because Kerry was a good candidate. Indeed, it’s a testament to Kerry’s awfulness as a candidate that he didn’t win, given Bush’s unpopularity. (Kinda like how it’s a testament to Al Gore’s awfulness as a candidate that he didn’t win in a landslide in 2000, given that the economy was strong, the country was at peace, and all external factors pointed to a victory for the incumbent party. But I digress.) A trained monkey or a cardboard cutout could have gotten 48% of the vote running against Bush in ‘04; the Democratic nominee just needed to be good enough to pick up an extra 2 or 3 percent on top of that. And Kerry couldn’t do it. So why on Earth would we nominate him again?

The Weather Channel’s Dr. Greg Forbes looks at Tuesday’s haboob, or duststorm, here in Phoenix.

HurricaneTrack.com’s commentary archive shows that the buzz is increasing about the possibility of a tropical cyclone forming in the northwestern Caribbean Sea or southeastern Gulf of Mexico this weekend (previously blogged here). The latest NHC Tropical Weather Outlook says:

SATELLITE IMAGES CONTINUE TO SHOW A LARGE AREA OF DISTURBED WEATHER EXTENDING FROM CENTRAL AMERICA NORTHEASTWARD ACROSS THE NORTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN SEA…AND PORTIONS OF CUBA AND THE BAHAMAS. THIS ACTIVITY IS PRIMARILY ASSOCIATED WITH A BROAD AREA OF LOW PRESSURE NEAR EASTERN YUCATAN. THERE ARE NO SIGNS OF ORGANIZATION AT THIS TIME…BUT ENVIRONMENTAL CONDITIONS COULD BECOME A LITTLE MORE FAVORABLE FOR SLOW DEVELOPMENT…IF THE AREA OF LOW PRESSURE MOVES AWAY FROM LAND WITHIN THE NEXT DAY OR TWO.

Charles Fenwick at Eye of the Storm wrote this afternoon:

it’s very early in the game, there is nothing resembling so much as a tropical depression at this time. A hurricane hunter plan is tentatively scheduled to investigate the area on Saturday, if it appears to be necessary.

The key unknown at this time is exactly where the center of low pressure will be (assuming, of course, that a closed low does form). The further up the coast, the more favorable the situation is for something to develop due to the extra time it would get over water after crossing the Yucatan.

At this time, I am highly skeptical of models that develop this significantly and quickly bring it into the central Gulf of Mexico. I find it more likely that anything developing hangs around the Bay of Campeche and affects Mexico only.

P.S. I know I’m taking “early in the game” to extremes now, but the AVN model forecast is very interesting. It shows a very weak tropical system (probably just a depression or minimal T.S.) forming near the Yucatan and hitting the Florida panhandle, then accelerating up the East Coast and becoming a major, presumably non-tropical, cyclone — another nor’easter! Here are the 78-hour and 144-hour forecasts from that model:

The usual caveat applies: individual computer-model forecasts, especially individual models uncorroborated by others, are extremely unreliable and should not be depended upon for any sort of planning purposes. This is more for curiosity than anything else.

As for the more long-term picture for hurricanes this season, here’s some possible good news:

NASA oceanographer David Adamec had some potentially encouraging news Wednesday about the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season. He reported that the position of the Bermuda High — the semi-permanent area of high pressure that sets up shop each summer over the Atlantic — is in a much better location than it was in 2005.

Last year at this time, the high had expanded far to the south and west, which tended to steer hurricanes toward the U.S. coastline… This year, so far, it hasn’t expanded as far south and west, which would likely tend to steer storms along the U.S. coastline and out into the ocean. …

More good news is that the sea-surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico is a mere 0.5°C above normal, unlike at this time in 2005 (click maps, above), when it was 2°C above the long-term average.

Finally, it’s not technically hurricane-related, but this is a pretty picture.

The last time a Newington High School team won a state championship, I was in seventh grade. The last time it happened in a CIAC-sponsored sport, I was an infant. And the last time an NHS team won a single-elimination, head-to-head CIAC state title game, I wasn’t even born yet.

Will that all change tonight? Will Newington finally earn another banner for its wall of champions?

Photo by Bonnie Stone

We’ll find out tomorrow night, when the #4-seeded Newington boys volleyball team (18-2) plays #2-seeded Staples of Westport (19-1) for the Class L state title.

Yes, that Westport — the fifth-richest town in Connecticut. Three days after dispatching the school’s traditional nemesis, Southington, now the Indians face that other postseason roadblock that always seems to get in the way of great NHS teams: mighty Fairfield County. :)

And, more specifically, yes, that Staples — the school whose boys’ soccer team eliminated a Newington squad led by the best soccer player ever to wear an NHS jersey, All-American Enzo Faienza, in the 1996 second round, and whose football team ended the Indians’ 2004 Cinderella season in the state semifinals. The Wreckers hope to wreck another Newington season tomorrow night, and make the Indians bridesmaids again.

Oh yeah, and the game is in the Southington High School gym. So, either Newington will achieve its greatest sports victory in the last dozen years on the home turf of its archrival — or else the Indians will suffer yet another crushing defeat in the shadow of all those damn SHS championship banners. :)

If all goes as planned, BrendanLoy.com will have four correspondents at the game, two providing cell-phone audio reports and two taking digital pictures (to be uploaded later). For the 99% of you who don’t care about Newington High School news and sports, I apologize for boring you with this. But, as I always say, I still “can’t hide that Newington pride” … so I’m very excited about this. (And, hey, it’s my blog, after all. :) This is the fourth time NHS has played in a state championship game since I started there (three of the four have been after I graduated, alas), and I am itching to see them finally win one.

For those of you who are sufficiently interested to click the “more” link, a bit of a history lesson will follow.

(more…)

Lieutenant Ahren Watada, a member of a Stryker brigade stationed out of Ft. Lewis, WA, has said he will refuse an order to deploy to Iraq with his unit in the coming months. Watada, who joined the Army three years ago, has stated that while he initially supported the war, he now believes it to be an unlawful action and that his duty as an officer, to both protect his fellow troops and to uphold and defend the Constitution and the United States, compels him to refuse what he believes is an unlawful order. Upon learning of his possible deployment, he attempted to resign his commission, but that request was denied as his unit is in the controversial “stop-loss” category and he still has time to serve anyhow. Watada has said that he does not believe ALL wars are unjust, and had he been deployed to Afghanistan, he would have gone. He is also not seeking conscientious objector status as he does not actually hold that belief. Although no charges have yet been filed against him, he is well aware that he will almost certainly face significant prison time for refusing an order, but feels he has no choice.

For more on this story and to hear his statement, see here.

[Bumped to top of homepage, since there was so much discussion and it scrolled off so quickly. -ed.]

Today, specifically I’m talking about the estate tax and the 18 families that have spent ten years lobbying to save a combined 1 trillion dollars on their taxes. That’s trillion with a T. And that’s one trillion more in debt and deficit spending that you, I, the fence post, and our kids our going to have to come up with. If the repeal of the estate tax becomes final, we are talking about vesting over a third of this nations wealth in the hands of less than 1 percent of the population by the middle of this century. And a population that has never done anything to earn that money.

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U.S. military shows video with F-16s dropping two 500-pound bombs that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Visit CNN for the latest.

He says it could use a few more pubs, but otherwise, he liked it. Heh.

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted terrorist in Iraq, is dead, according to an aide to Iraq's prime minister. Visit CNN for the latest.

MSNBC reports: “U.S. officials: Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been killed.”

Is anyone willing to be a BrendanLoy.com correspondent at the Newington-Staples boys volleyball state championship game Friday at Southington High School at 7pm? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

Ideally, I’m looking for someone with a cell phone and a digital camera. (I’ll e-mail you the necessary information so you can audioblog game updates directly from your phone, and you can e-mail or FTP me the photos afterward.) If necessary, though, I can overnight you my spare cell phone and spare digital camera. Yes, I have spares, and yes, I am that desperate to have a correspondent at this game. :)

Anyway, please e-mail me at tips [at] brendanloy.com if you’re interested!

P.S. On a related note… does anyone know if there’s cell-phone reception in the Southington High School gym? With Sprint PCS specifically… or with any other carrier, for that matter…

Uhh…

BORN AT 6AM ON 06/06/06, HIS MUM WAS INDUCED FOR 6 DAYS, HE WEIGHS 6LBS 6OZ AND HE’S CALLED… DAMIEN

Horror film fan Suzanne Cooper yesterday named her baby Damien after the devil child in the The Omen, who was also born on June 6.

Suzanne went one better than the movie by hitting the full Number of the Beast with the date - 6/6/06.

Special needs teacher Suzanne, 36, was also induced for six days before Damien arrived at 6.59am, tipping the scales at a spine-chilling 6lb 6oz.

She said: “We are overjoyed about the baby. The Omen is one of our favourite films and that’s why I was keeping my legs crossed for a birth on the 6th.

“It does seem a bit weird I suppose, but he’s a perfect baby - nothing at all like Damien in The Omen.”

Well, if he was the Son of the Devil, you probably wouldn’t know it yet, now would you??

In all seriousness, am I the only one who thinks this woman is taking a fairly substantial risk here? I’m not talking about the risk that her son is Satan’s spawn; I’m talking about the risk that some crazy religious nutcase will see this story in the media, will think her son is Satan’s spawn, and will try to harm the kid. Granted, that’s probably fairly unlikely to happen, but it’s a non-negligible risk, and an utterly unnecessary one, don’t you think? And besides, even if nobody tries to hurt him, poor Damien Cooper is probably in for a pretty rough childhood, what with all the teasing he’ll get once his classmates figure this out — which they presumably will, since his mother apparently sought out the media to report on this!! She seems to be treating the birth of her child as a vanity project, and I wonder if she’s thought through the possible consequences for the kid — who has no choice in any of this, whereas she deliberately chose to do things this way.

P.S. Speaking of The Omen, the remake set a box-office record for a Tuesday with $12.6 million.