That was quick. At 5:20 MST this morning, a low-pressure system was better organized in the Atlantic. It is now a formal system. From the 11 a.m. EDT (8 a.m. MST) NHC advisory:

SECOND TROPICAL DEPRESSION OF THE SEASON FORMS OFF THE NORTH CAROLINA COAST…
…TROPICAL STORM WATCH ISSUED FOR EASTERN NORTH CAROLINA…

AT 11 AM EDT…1500 UTC…A TROPICAL STORM WATCH HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR THE EASTERN COAST OF NORTH CAROLINA FROM NORTH OF CAPE LOOKOUT NORTHWARD TO SOUTH OF CURRITUCK BEACH LIGHT.

FOR STORM INFORMATION SPECIFIC TO YOUR AREA…INCLUDING POSSIBLE INLAND WATCHES AND WARNINGS…PLEASE MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED BY YOUR LOCAL WEATHER OFFICE.

AT 1100 AM EDT…1500Z…THE CENTER OF TROPICAL DEPRESSION TWO WAS LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 32.5 NORTH…LONGITUDE 73.4 WEST OR ABOUT 220 MILES…355 KM…SOUTH-SOUTHEAST OF CAPE HATTERAS NORTH CAROLINA.

THE DEPRESSION IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTH NEAR 5 MPH. A SLOW TURN TOWARD THE NORTH-NORTHWEST OR NORTHWEST IS EXPECTED TO OCCUR LATER TONIGHT OR WEDNESDAY.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 35 MPH…55 KM/HR…WITH HIGHER GUSTS. SOME STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS AND THE DEPRESSION COULD BECOME A TROPICAL STORM LATER TODAY OR TONIGHT.

THE ESTIMATED MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE IS 1011 MB…29.85 INCHES.

Next advisory at 2 p.m. EDT.

The NHC issued a Special Tropical Disturbance Statement at 8:20 AM EDT (5:20 MST):

SATELLITE AND SURFACE OBSERVATIONS THIS MORNING INDICATE THE LOW PRESSURE AREA LOCATED ABOUT 250 MILES SOUTHEAST OF NORTH CAROLINA COAST HAS BECOME BETTER ORGANIZED THIS MORNING… AND A TROPICAL DEPRESSION MAY BE FORMING. AN AIR FORCE RESERVE RECONNAISSANCE AIRCRAFT IS SCHEDULED TO INVESTIGATE THE SYSTEM THIS AFTERNOON. INTERESTS ALONG THE NORTH CAROLINA AND VIRGINIA COASTS SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF THIS SYSTEM.

Dr. Jeff Masters, FLhurricane and HurricaneTrack have more.

Mickey Kaus — responding to BloggingHeads.tv collaborator Robert Wright’s New York Times article proposing “An American Foreign Policy That Both Realists and Idealists Should Fall in Love With” — explains brilliantly the very reason why I am, frankly, extremely pessimistic about our ability to win the war on terror, regardless of who’s the president or what his/her strategy is:

If advances in “information technology” and “munitions technology” establish an “alarming principle” under which “grass-roots hatred and resentment of American may be converted into the death of Americans with growing efficiency,” how can we possibly reduce hatred enough to save our skins? If, eventually, any 12 reasonably well-educated angry men can cook up a devastating attack, isn’t it hopeless? We’ll never lower the number of angry anti-Americans to single digits.

It reminds me of this delightfully pessimistic article by NRO’s John Derbyshire, which Andrew sent me a couple of years ago. Mind you, I definitely don’t agree with everything Derb says, but he does make some intriguing points. Excerpt:

One of the disorienting things for an Old World conservative settling in America is that over here, even conservatives are optimistic. This really won’t do. A conservative ought to be a pessimist, at least about human nature, human society, and the prospects for improving them. The facile cheeriness of the lefty world-perfecters are not for us, with their New Soviet Man, their Socialist Spiritual Civilization, their City of the Sun, their coming reign of peace, justice, and absolute equality. We are more of the temper of H. P. Lovecraft, who began one of his short stories with the arresting observation that: “Life is a hideous thing.”

In an attempt to redress the balance, to tug my conservative American friends back towards a properly gloomy outlook on events, I have given over today’s column to a list of unpleasant truths. …

Something inconceivably horrible will happen in the Middle East. Probably the following: The Arabs will commit some huge, gross atrocity against Israel. Surviving Israelis will respond by massacring the Palestinian Arabs, and perhaps erasing a couple of Arab capitals. 100 years of peace in the Middle East will follow.

The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are saddled up and ready to ride. Just to remind you, their names are: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death. No. 4 will presumably always be with us, but at least we have got Nos. 1, 2, and 3 pretty much fenced off in sub-Saharan Africa, right? The chance that you or me, or your kids or mine, will die in a genuine mass-mobilization-type, carriers-going-down-with-all-hands-type, flattened-cities-type war, or from starvation, or in some horrid medieval-type, communal-grave-type, 1918-flu-type plague, is actuarially insignificant, right? Well, believe it if you like, but your belief has no foundation more substantial than wishful thinking. History suggests that it is most likely false. …

The U.S. constitution is incompatible with a war on terrorism. It is absurdly easy to commit a terrorist act in the U.S.A. This state of affairs could be changed only by abandoning key constitutional protections. We shall be very reluctant to do this; but if deaths from terrorism reach a certain number, we shall do it anyway. That number has either seven or eight digits. …

We are living in a golden age. The past was pretty awful; the future will be far worse. Enjoy!

Heh.

Oprah Winfrey isn’t gay. The world may now resume spinning.

The question arose, apparently, because of Winfrey’s extremely close relationship with her best friend, former Connecticut local news anchor Gayle King, who said, “The truth is, if we were gay, we would tell you, because there’s nothing wrong with being gay.”

Oprah and Gayle join Lennox Lewis, Mike Piazza, and Jeff Garcia on the list of people to unnecessarily announce that they aren’t gay.

Mystery writer Mickey Spillane dies after a long illness, a nursing home spokesman says. He was 87. Visit CNN for the latest.

Israeli PM Ehud Olmert:

Citizens of Israel,

There are moments in the life of a nation, when it is compelled to look directly into the face of reality and say: no more!

And I say to everyone: no more!

Israel will not be held hostage – not by terror gangs or by a terrorist authority or by any sovereign state. …

All of us – Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze and Circassians – now stand as one person, as one nation, subject together to the same hatred and malice, and fighting against it in consensus and partnership. When missiles are launched at our residents and cities, our answer will be war with all the strength, determination, valor, sacrifice and dedication which characterize this nation.

There is nothing we want more than peace and good neighborly relations – in the east, north and south. We seek peace, we pursue peace and we yearn for peace. At the same time, there is nothing we reject more than an attempt to harm us and make us give up our right to live here, in our land, in security and peace.

On behalf of the people of Israel, on behalf of all the residents of the country, I came here today, Madam Speaker, to announce to the world: we seek neither war nor direct confrontation, but we will not be deterred from them when the need arises. Only a nation that can defend its freedom truly deserves it. We are entitled to our freedom, and when necessary, we know how to fight for it and defend it.

Read the whole thing.

Hillary Clinton has said that she’ll support the winner of the Lieberman-Lamont primary, whoever it is. Hillary’s husband Bill isn’t explicitly contradicting his senatorial wife on that point, but he did stick up for Lieberman during an appearance at the Aspen Institute last week:

“If we allow our differences over what to do now in Iraq to divide us instead of focusing on replacing Republicans in Congress; that’s the nuttiest strategy I ever heard in my life,” Clinton told the nonprofit cultural organization. …

Clinton defended Lieberman’s Democratic credentials, mentioning how the senator has been endorsed by labor unions, environmental organizations and gay groups.

“We’ve got a world of differences between ourselves and the Republicans,” he said. “So I think the Democrats are making a mistake to go after each other … for a situation none of them created.”

Indeed. (Amen also to Clinton’s opposition to an Iraq timetable — “Why send a signal to the people that are trying to keep Iraq divided and tear it up when we’re gonna go?” — and his recommendation, as paraphrased by Ross Douthat, that the Democrats “should attack the GOP for not being serious about homeland security, for passing tax cuts while failing to fund port security, and so on. You can just imagine how he’d fillet the Republicans on that issue if he were in the race.” Yup, sure can. Sometimes, heaven help me, I do miss ol’ Billy Boy.)

But James Bennet noticed something else — something a bit odd — in Clinton’s discussion of Iraq:

When Jim [Fallows] asked how the Democrats should handle the Iraq war, Clinton replied in part, “We ought to be whipped, us Democrats, if we allow our differences over what to do now in Iraq to divide us” instead of sticking it to the Republicans. He segued into a discussion of Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman’s position in favor of going to war, noting how it squared with the view of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others that Saddam Hussein was such a menace he should be removed regardless of whether he had WMD. Then, out of the blue, came this: “That was also the position of every Israeli politician I knew, by the way.” Huh? Where did that come from?

It may have been true - though I knew some Israeli politicians with doubts about the war - but what did it have to do with the rest of his comments? Was it an accusation of dual loyalty? (And how, by any stretch, did it conform with his own exhortation not to let Democrats’ differences on the war divide them?)

I seriously doubt Clinton was accusing Lieberman of “dual loyalty” — that would be the ugliest possible interpretation of his remarks, and I won’t believe it unless I see better evidence that that was his intent — but the statement about Israeli politicians sure does sound like “a hint that we went to war for Israel.” What else could it mean? Or, more precisely, why would he say it at all, if he didn’t mean to “hint” that?

Well, perhaps there is an alternative explanation: “One longtime and acute observer of Clinton, whom I won’t name here, suggested to me that, as is his tendency, Clinton was looking to please people he spotted in the crowd before him - in this case, seated in the front rows, several representatives of Arab nations, including Queen Noor of Jordan.” Or, as Mickey Kaus puts it: “Clinton was just flirting with Queen Noor.” Heh.

Israel-bashing, or blatant extramarital flirting with attractive foreign dignitaries? Which is more likely from Clinton? Why am I even bothering to ask this question? :) Moving right along…

In all seriousness, though, I’d love to hear someone ask Clinton to clarify what he meant.

The space shuttle Discovery and its crew of six have safely landed at Kennedy Space Center in Florida after a 13-day mission that included a stop at the international space station. Visit CNN for the latest.

…Away, Calderon-O! (Apologies to Antonio López de Santa Anna :)

But Begone, Felipe Calderone! was indeed the Message of a Million Mexicans Marching in the capital city yesterday ~

MEXICO CITY — Blaring horns and beating drums, an estimated 1 million protesters from all over Mexico converged on the capital Sunday to hear the runner-up in the presidential election call for “peaceful civil resistance” to force a vote-by-vote recount.

Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s exhortation significantly intensified his efforts to use public pressure to reverse his apparent half-percentage-point loss to Felipe Calderon, a free-trade booster.

The rally at Mexico City’s downtown square, the Zocalo, was the latest and largest flash point in a two-week electoral crisis expected to last two months while a special elections court hears Lopez Obrador’s fraud allegations and decides whether to conduct a recount.

Lopez Obrador stoked the crowd with allegations of voter fraud, saying Calderon would be an “illegitimate” president. He repeated his contention that the Federal Electoral Institute, an internationally respected independent organization, rigged computers to ensure Calderon’s victory. And he made a new claim, saying his supporters should protest because “errors” were committed in 60,000 of the country’s 130,000 polling places.

Read the rest.

Ah, me.

Oh, down in Mexico
I never really been so I don’t really know
Oh, Mexico
I guess I’ll have to go

(Apologies to sweetbaby James Taylor :)

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

(We return you now to the Regularly-scheduled Iranian- Hezbollahn-Israeli War.)

Israeli ground troops have entered southern Lebanon to attack Hezbollah bases on the border, a government spokesman said today, according to news agencies. Visit CNN for the latest.

Lebanese television says an Israeli plane has been shot down and the network is showing images of falling debris, news agencies report. CNN working to confirm. Visit CNN for the latest.

Indonesia's president says at least five people have been killed in a tsunami that hit Java after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake in the Indian Ocean, news agencies report. Visit CNN for the latest.

With the Space Shuttle Discovery set to return to Earth tomorrow despite a hydraulics problem, Colin Pedicini is praying for a safe landing.

UPDATE: [Bumped to top of page. -ed.] More here. The landing is scheduled for 9:14 AM EDT, or 6:14 AM MST. The final go/no-go decision will be made around 7:57 AM EDT (4:57 AM MST), according to this timeline.

No promises, but I’ll try to get up in time to liveblog the landing. There will definitely be liveblog coverage here.

The Phoenix Valley’s monsoon season began on July 2 — the first of 3+ consecutive days of dew points 55° or higher, the official criteria for the start of the monsoon — but thus far, we’ve been getting more of the bad stuff that the monsoon brings (high humidity on top of the stifling heat) than the good stuff (bitchin’ thunderstorms).

That changed this weekend, though, at least for a day, when an awesome thunderstorm hit Gold Canyon just as Becky, her dad, her brother and I were enjoying a nice relaxing dip in the pool. There didn’t appear to be much threat of bad weather when we started swimming; the forecast didn’t call for storms in our area, and what thunder we could hear was very distant. But about 20 minutes after we got in the pool, the wind changed, and very, very suddenly, stuff started blowing around, the sky opened up and began pouring, and an ear-splitting thunderclap sent us scampering out of the pool. (Admittedly, there are dozens of much taller things nearby that are more likely to be struck by lightning than that small, below-ground swimming pool, but still, it’s obviously not worth taking the chance.)

The thunderstorm that hit us basically developed right overhead. You can see for yourself on this animated-GIF radar loop. (We were located near “J” in “Apache Junction.”) Here are some of my pictures of the storm.

Once out of the pool, we saw lightning strike the iron-laden Superstition Mountain several times, which was totally cool. The heavy rain and wind, flooding and rain patterns in the sky were also pretty neat. But the most impressive thing, actually, was the temperature drop. It went from over 110 degrees — which is very hot for the far East Valley where Becky’s parents live — to 78 degrees in the course of about 20 minutes.

UPDATE: Here’s some video of the storm. I didn’t catch any lightning on video, alas, but you can see the rain and wind:

source file

As if blogging hasn’t already been light enough recently (damn the man! hehe), it promises to be even lighter in the next week or so, thanks to computer problems. My 17-inch PowerBook, a.k.a. “my baby,” is in the shop… sob sob. I took it into the Apple Store yesterday, and it’s due to be sent to an off-site repair facility tomorrow, because my sound card is broken, such that I can listen to music via earphones or streaming to my AirPort Express, but not via the laptop’s speakers. This has been the case since late April, actually, and the problem coincided with the appearance of a red light coming from inside my earphone jack… which, in turn, coincided with my iPhoto library hitting exactly 6,666 photos. Creepy, eh? Actually, others have had the same problem — see here — so it’s probably not Satan-related. :)

Anyway, I’ve been waiting for the opportune moment (as Captain Jack would say) to get it repaired, which meant delaying until after our 4th of July trip. But now I’ve finally bit the bullet and sent it in, so I’m temporarily reduced to using Becky’s five-year-old, spacebar-less iBook — the one she replaced in March — as “my computer,” booting it up using a cloned copy of my system that’s located on Kristy’s FireWire hard drive. Here’s what the setup looks like. My 17-inch PowerBook’s Dock looks rather tiny on a 12-inch iBook’s screen, but the bigger problem is the damn broken spacebar, which makes it quite difficult to type. Bah.

So yeah, I probably won’t be blogging too much this week. Besides, on Friday morning we leave for the firm’s summer-program retreat at the Grand Canyon, and given that a laptop isn’t really all that portable when it has to be tethered to an external hard drive at all times, I most likely won’t be bringing it with me.