Testifying before Congress today, General John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command, stated that the sectarian violence in Iraq is the worst he has ever seen, and that civil war is a very real possibility if it continues.

Hopefully some of those who have had their heads buried in the sand regarding the reality of the situation in Iraq will finally listen. For all those who have been rallying behind the White House’s continued denial of the worsening situation and instead have tried to blame a left-wing media conspiracy, I’m hoping that hearing this news from the top general is the wake-up call that is needed to cut through the partisan blinders that too many in this country have been operating under.

And before anyone (and I’m thinking of a few people in particular) accuses me of being happy about this situation, I want to clarify a few things.

First, I am NOT happy that there is increasing violence in Iraq. Anyone who thinks that is a good thing is off their nut.

I am NOT happy that Bush’s foreign policy and handling of this war in particular have been so poor. I would rather be wrong and have Iraq be a safe and successful democracy than be right and have to watch a fire of violence erupt in the Middle East.

What I AM happy about is that the truth about the situation in Iraq is being repeated by someone whom the right can’t so easily dismiss. Hopefully this will get people to acknowledge that Bush’s Iraq plan (or lack thereof) needs to be changed, that the “keeping doing the same thing til it works” style of leadership is absolutely and unequivocally flawed.

Does that mean I think we should immediately pull out our troops and give up on Iraq? No, I don’t, but I DO think a troop withdrawal should be seriously considered and not dismissed out of hand.

I do think that this highlights the need for a new plan of action in Iraq, one that acknowledges the reality of the situation and seeks a solution that will work. Again, no one is saying that means we need to give up, but saying that everything is ok when it’s not helps no one.

So what needs to happen now? First, there needs to be some accountability. It is obvious that there have been mistakes made, and typically when large mistakes are made in any organization, people are held accountable. Whether it goes as high up as Donald Rumsfeld, or is at lower levels, changes need to be made. Second, those changes need to be made not with bringing in people who are giving the same answers as before, but new ideas, different ideas.

It’s time, Mr. President, to accept the fact that the course you are on is not the correct one, and it’s time to try a different course. Only an idiot would stay the course if that course was leading them off a cliff.

With primary day less than a week away, Joe Lieberman is losing badly to Ned Lamont among likely primary voters, according to the latest Quinnipiac poll.

Unsurprisingly, they’re happy at Daily Kos. Kos also quotes the Lieberman spin, and wonders about Joe’s ground game. His thoughts about what happens on that score if Lieberman loses the primary, and runs as an independent, are enough to make me feel rather pessimistic:

Word is leaking out of the campaign that efforts to hire and organize several thousand itinerant campaign workers have fallen far short of expectations and necessity. Lieberman and his battered brain trust will now have to decide whether to continue investing funds in that effort or save money for November. These primary troubles are a preview of what he can expect in his new life as an independent should he lose on Tuesday. Much of his weak campaign organization will dutifully head to the triumphant Democratic nominee or simply sit out the race. …

The AFL-CIO, which has endorsed Lieberman and may be providing some of Lieberman’s ground game, won’t be around for an independent Lieberman bid. And his hired guns are having trouble putting together much of anything. … He’ll lose the support of people like Bill Clinton and most US Senators (Inouye, Pryor and Salazar being the exceptions). He’ll lose what little of a ground game he has. He’ll lose all of labor. He’ll lose most of the other groups that have endorsed him.

Kos goes on to say, “Lieberman can go out a sore loser, or he can go out a statesman. He can say next Tuesday that he has the votes to get on the ballot as an independent, but he’ll accept the will of the people.” I don’t agree one iota with Kos’s ridiculous contention that Lieberman will be disregarding “the will of the people” if he runs as an independent after losing on Tuesday. As noted here, the “20% of Connecticut’s registered Democrats who turn out for the closed primary in the middle of the summer” are not self-evidently representative of “the people.” In fact, they’re self-evidently not. Candidates like Lamont have a natural advantage in circumstances like this; primaries almost always pull a disproportionate number of angry voters at the ideological extremes, and the lower the turnout, the more slanted the result. With rare exceptions like me, Lieberman’s supporters aren’t terribly passionate; they support him solidly but not fervently. Lamont’s supporters, by contrast, are rabid. That doesn’t mean they’re more numerous, but it does mean more of them are “likely voters.” It’s patently absurd to claim that Lieberman would be disrespecting the “will of the people” by going head-to-head against both Lamont and the Republican candidate in a general election that many more people will vote in. But regardless of all that, Kos does have a potentially valid point about Lieberman’s “ground game.”

More broadly, the momentum (or Ned-mentum?) of a Lamont victory on Tuesday would totally change the dynamics of a three-way race, and only after the dust settles would we have a clear idea what’s going to happen. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but I’m not feeling optimistic at the moment. The Democratic Party is on the verge of giving one of its most principled and honorable members a giant “f*** you” because his loyalty wasn’t blind enough and his conscience wasn’t pliable enough. Heaven help ‘em.

Well, so much for “a certain je ne sais quoi.” As of the 11:00 AM EDT NHC discussion, the Chris Death Watch is on:

THE COMBINATION OF DRY LOW- TO MID-LEVEL AIR AND SHEAR…ASSOCIATED WITH AN UPPER-LEVEL CYCLONE THAT DROPPED SOUTHWARD INTO CHRIS…HAS TAKEN ITS TOLL ON THE TROPICAL CYCLONE. CHRIS IS DEVOID OF DEEP CONVECTION WITHIN ABOUT 75 N MI RADIUS OF THE CENTER. SOME HEAVY SHOWERS CONTINUE FARTHER TO THE SOUTHEAST AND ARE AFFECTING PUERTO RICO AND THE VIRGIN ISLANDS. THIS ACTIVITY IS LIKELY TO SPREAD WESTWARD INTO HISPANIOLA TODAY.

DATA FROM THE LAST AERIAL RECONNAISSANCE MISSION SUGGESTED THAT CHRIS MAY HAVE ALREADY DROPPED BELOW TROPICAL STORM INTENSITY. IF IT HAS NOT…IT WILL LIKELY DO SO VERY SOON UNLESS SOME DEEP CONVECTION REDEVELOPS NEAR THE CENTER. THE FORECAST RETAINS THE SYSTEM AS A DEPRESSION THROUGH THE FORECAST PERIOD. THIS IS A PRECAUTION THAT ALLOWS FOR THE POSSIBILITY OF REGENERATION…SINCE THE SHEAR COULD RELAX AND THE THERMODYNAMIC ENVIRONMENT BECOME MORE FAVORABLE OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS. HOWEVER…IF PRESENT TRENDS CONTINUE…CHRIS COULD DISSIPATE AS A TROPICAL CYCLONE FAIRLY SOON.

I wonder if there’s any chance the heavy showers well south of Chris’s center will stay together long enough to get away from land and perhaps redevelop a new low-level center? And if so, I wonder if it would be named Chris or Debby? I’m thinking the latter, but I’m not sure.

UPDATE: SciGuy: “The low-level center is what looks like a hurricane, and the thunderstorms are all to the south, over Puerto Rico. Behold the power of wind shear!”

The Storm Track has more, as does guestblogger Shaun on Dr. Jeff Masters’s blog.

Margie Kieper: “Is this the end of Chris? Well, it’s the end of Chris, Tropical Storm…for now. Without any convection, the surface circulation will spin down, and eventually die, and this will certainly happen pronto if Chris meets land. If the shear lets up before the LLC falls apart, convection could start firing off again, and that is definitely not out of the realm of reasonable probability. In five days we could be watching Chris, part 2.”

Alan Sullivan thinks were will be a Chris, part 2: “Some remnant will eventually reach the Gulf of Mexico and regenerate. But there no longer appears to be any threat to the East Coast of the US, and there never was any reason to run up oil futures, as skittish traders did two days ago.”

Charles Fenwick suggests part 2 may be on its way already: “Right now there is a small area of convection that has fired up near the center. Too soon characterize whether it’s the beginning of a comeback, or if it’s more like a last gasp.”

Stay tuned.

P.S. The Weather Channel’s Dr. Steve Lyons has a detailed discussion of Chris’s (apparent) demise:

(more…)

From Ted Koppel over on NPR. You don’t even have to read it, you can listen to it.

Key point:

Here’s what scares me: One of these days, we’re going to have another catastrophe in this country. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready.

[…]

The point is that we need to begin setting up a network that reaches from the federal government to the state level, from the states to the cities and townships and from every police, fire and sheriff’s department into each and every neighborhood. I know they can reach me when they want to, because I hear from them when they have a fundraiser coming up.

Tropical Storm Chris is weakening, its low-level circulation becoming separated from its thunderstorms, according to the 2:00 AM EDT advisory, whose opening line is “CHRIS BECOMING DISORGANIZED.” Excerpt:

CHRIS APPEARS TO BE MOVING TOWARD THE WEST NEAR 11 MPH…18 KM/HR. A GENERAL MOTION TOWARD THE WEST IS FORECAST DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. ON THIS TRACK…THE CENTER OF CHRIS WOULD STAY NORTH OF PUERTO RICO. HOWEVER…CHRIS IS EXPECTED TO BRING OCCASIONAL HEAVY RAINS AND GUSTY WINDS TO PUERTO RICO AND U.S. AND BRITISH VIRGIN ISLANDS TODAY.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE DECREASED TO NEAR 55 MPH…90 KM/HR… WITH HIGHER GUSTS. IF THE CENTER OF CHRIS CONTINUES TO MOVE AWAY FROM THE THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY…GRADUAL WEAKENING IS ANTICIPATED.

Earlier, after the 11pm EDT advisory, The Storm Track speculated that Chris was on the verge of becoming a hurricane but the NHC was in denial about it. (He also said a southern component to the track, and a hit on Puerto Rico, were not out of the question.) I’m not sure where he stands on that now.

I’ve received more than 2,000 hits today, which is about 600 above average, despite getting no major links from other blogs or anything like that. Also, I’m getting an usually high number of search-engine hits resulting from seaches for either “irish trojan” or “brendan loy.” Such a pattern tends to suggest that I was mentioned on TV or the radio somewhere, causing some people to go searching for me, and others to type in my URL directly, but leaving me with no direct stat trail back to the source of the mention (since the source is not on the Internet and therefore I can’t see where the extra visitors are coming from). Can anyone fill me in on what’s going on?

UPDATE: Commenter Fax Paladin thinks the extra visitors are just people who remember me from the 2005 hurricane season and are coming back to see what I’m saying about Tropical Storm Chris. I hadn’t thought of that, but he might well be right.

Israeli military resumes airstrikes on Lebanese capital, saying it is aimimg at Hezbollah targets in Beirut. Visit CNN for the latest.

Tropical Storm Chris’s intensification trend has stopped, and indeed, he has weakened slightly, from 65 mph and 1001 mb to 60 mph and 1005 mb. Still, uncertainty rules the day, and with the Florida Keys in the crosshairs — and the bathtub-like Gulf of Mexico beyond — that’s not exactly comforting. “Add it all up, and that’s trouble with a capital ‘T’, which rhymes with ‘C,’ which stands for ‘Chris,’” declares Harold Hill Bob King at the Palm Beach Post’s storm blog.

“If I were in the lower Keys right now, I would be thinking about where I would be staying this weekend, as it sure wouldn’t be there,” writes Charles Fenwick at Eye of the Storm.

Mark Sudduth at Hurricane Track has a good summary of the forecast possibilities:

[I]t may be that Chris will not become a hurricane anytime soon. The latest info from the NHC suggests that conditions could be more hostile down the road. This is a tough storm to forecast right now with so many conflicting signals. At least we are dealing with a tropical storm and not some monster hurricane. The forecast does show Chris becoming a hurricane but later on in the period.

The track has not changed too much. Overall the global models are not picking up on the storm very well and the different models have differnt solutions for Chris as time evolves. As it stands now, Chris should pass north of the Greater Antilles and arrive in to the Gulf of Mexico in about five days. This track has huge implications for how strong Chris could be later on. Obviously if the storm/hurricane passes over the big land areas, it will weaken and be torn apart. A track entirely over water could help to keep it stronger — if other factors are positive as well. This one seems very complicated and we will just have to watch and wait.

The Houston Chronicle’s SciGuy thinks the uncertainty will begin to diminish tomorrow:

The bottom line is that, like most hurricanes, Chris remains largely unpredictable. I think that may change a little, beginning tomorrow. A couple of airplanes have been gathering data from the upper atmosphere that will be fed into the computer models this afternoon and evening. Therefore, I would say that tomorrow morning’s forecast will carry more confidence.

So… stay tuned, as they say.

Actor Mel Gibson is charged with misdemeanor drunken driving, having an elevated blood-alcohol level and having an open container of liquor in his car. Visit CNN for the latest.

Brandon Ting, a USC defensive back, supposedly tested positive for steroids. He and his twin brother, Ryan, have both left the program to concentrate on med school.

My favorite part about this was my friend Eric’s response. When I told him that Ting was only a back-up player, he said, “Apparently he wasn’t taking enough steroids.”

In Wonkette apparently [update: an aid to (it would appear)] Rep. Richard Pombo said some nasty stuff about Connecticut. Does anyone have any idea what set this guy off?

Of course if they elect Lieberman again, I might well have to agree with him.

Bush Grants Self Permission To Grant More Power To Self

Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence

Sparrow Aviation Administration Blames Collision On Failure To Detect Pane Of Glass

Boyfriend Not To Be Trusted With Netflix Queue

Visit to Google Earth Reveals House is On Fire

The Lord of the Rings — now with lightsabers.

Heh.

P.S. Here’s another video along the same lines.

And then there’s this LOTR parody from the MTV VMAs, featuring Jack Black and Sarah Michelle Gellar. Hilarious, but very off-color. You’ve been warned. :)

Well, folks, we could be looking at our first serious tropical threat of 2006. It’s too early to be sure, but Tropical Storm Chris has thus far defied expectations, first by not dissipating last night, and now by strengthening unexpectedly into a relatively strong tropical storm. He’s at 60 mph and counting, as of 2:00 AM EDT. According to the public advisory: “SOME STRENGTHENING IS FORECAST DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS… AND CHRIS COULD BECOME A HURRICANE LATER TODAY.” AccuWeather, as usual, is more bullish than the NHC: “Chris could easily be a hurricane by Wednesday morning.”

Dr. Jeff Masters writes of the surprise intensification: “The Hurricane Hunters found much stronger winds than expected in Chris this afternoon. … Most surprising were the winds in the southeast quadrant, which were in the 55-60 mph range.” Adam Moyer at The Storm Track also notes the unexpected strengthening, and admits: “For the last few days, Bryan and I (and NHC for that matter) have been skeptical of the development of the former Invest 99L [Chris’s “name” before becoming a tropical depression -ed.]. ‘Too much shear,’ we said. ‘Too much dry air,’ we said. Clearly, we were wrong.”

I gotta say, I wonder if they’re going to keep being wrong. At the moment, Chris is officially expected to become a Category 1 hurricane in 36 hours, and then see its intensity plateau at that level. I wonder if it’ll get stronger, faster. As an amateur weather observer with no meteorological training, I don’t have the expertise that Adam, Bryan, and of course the NHC meteorologists have… but sometimes I, like Margie Keeper, get a feeling about a storm, a sense that it has “a certain je ne sais quoi.” And sometimes, it seems like storms that defy expectations have a tendency to continue defying expectations. I suppose I’m anthropomorphizing a bit, but… I dunno. Let’s just say I wouldn’t be stunned if Chris is a major hurricane five days from now. I’m not predicting it; I don’t have the expertise to do that. I just have a hunch.

What are the experts saying will happen next? Moyer writes:

As for the forecast, it’s pretty difficult at this point. None of the global models have yet to pick up on Chris, so it’s up to the hurricane-specific models to make the forecast. Shear is actually fairly low over Chris at the moment (<15 kts). So long as it stays in a low-shear environment, there is no reason Chris can't intensify, since...SSTs are warm and the dry air is sufficiently far away. The GFDL briefly takes Chris up to hurricane strength and the SHIPS models approach it, but their initial conditions are too weak. The offical NHC forecast has it becoming a hurricane in 72 hours. I tend to agree with their forecast, again provided that Chris stays away from shear. [There is] an upper-level low over the Bahamas. If Chris moves toward the upper-level low, shear will increase and Chris will probably be blown apart. For the track forecast, the models are quite divergent. Some have tracks directly across Haiti and Cuba, while others recurve it out to sea without threatening the US. For now, I would just take the average of all the models and keep it moving to the west-northwest. Interests in Florida and along the Eastern Seaboard are going to want to start paying attention to Chris in the near future.

And, er, maybe the Gulf of Mexico, too, if Chris manages to move through the Florida Straits, right in between Cuba and Florida — which, coincidentally, is precisely what the official forecast track calls for right now. Hurricane Chris entering the Gulf this weekend? A scary thought, given what’s happening with the Loop Current. The Houston Chronicle’s SciGuy is also concerned. But let’s all remember how unreliable 5-day forecasts are. It’s way too early to know where Chris is headed. All we know is that he’s worth watching.

I’m a couple of days late on this story, but… scientists have discovered the biggest thing in the universe, and it’s a giant blob. No, I’m not talking about Oprah.