Dear Danny Boy:



Apparently, you failed to take under advisement some of my suggestions that could’ve delayed the inevitable (That being your client Christine O’Donnell’s ghost-written pissing and moaning about losing the 2010 Delaware Senate Election winding up in the bargain bin at Wal-Marts, Targets and other fine right wing Big Box stores). I say this with sincere regret because Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks book sales, reports that Ms. O’Donnell’s highly-anticipated memoir has sold only 2000 copies (although it's a known fact this does not include sales at Wal-Mart, Sam's Club or elsewhere in Mr. Sam's empire. Otherwise, with the likely literacy quotient of your typical Wal-Mart purveyor of Chinese-made goods, the sales from Wal-Mart could've bumped her up to 2100).



It doesn’t augur well when Senator Rand Paul’s own deathless prose, I Was Not Named After Ayn Rand, which had sold a whopping 6000 copies, beat Ms. O’Donnell’s book sales by 300%. No doubt, the key to actual sales lies in actually winning elections. Take Dick Cheney’s own autobiography, If You Don’t Like Torture, Then Go Fuck Yourself, which came out just a few days ago. Mere days after its release, IYDLTTGFY is the #1 selling book on Amazon. The former Vice President/President of Halliburton Contract Procurement’s secret to literary success is obvious and one that Ms. O’Donnell should’ve copied on Election Night: She should’ve named herself to the Senate regardless of the will of the people.



To be fair, Ms. O’Donnell can take heart that her recent book signing at a Barnes & Noble in Naples, Florida attracted five people (including a presidential candidate). It’s promising because, by coincidence, five is exactly the number of people who’d showed the slightest bit of interest in literary lion Joe the Plumber’s book in 2009. At her signing, Ms. O’Donnell offers through her book and example valuable advice on politics, which is somewhat akin to single mom Bristol Palin giving abstinence advice to teenage girls.



How much would it suck to be disinvited by the very same people who in the past have invited to their rallies people like Joe the Plumber and Victoria Jackson? Granted, she didn’t help her own cause by once asking, “Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” But at the time, who knew this would be singled out for examination and ver batim reiteration by the liberal mainstream media considering the other idiotic statements by Tea Bagger darlings and other Flat Earthers?



In spite of being the most godly woman in America, it’s obvious that the Lord does not want Ms. O’Donnell to be an author in spite of yours and St. Martin’s Press’s most valiant efforts in the interests of what liberals call “wingnut welfare.” Perhaps He’s waiting for her to actually win an election and make something of herself before investing His energies and good graces toward future literary masterpieces.



In the future, let me take an unread page from Ms. O'Donnell's neglected masterpiece and offer you a bit of advice: Before body-tackling the next Republican loser of an election a mere 31 days after a non-concession speech and cynically trying to hustle a fast buck by fast-tracking their ghost-written book while the iron's still hot lukewarm, stop, consider and ask yourself:



"Does America really need yet another ghost-written memoir by another right wing brain transplant candidate?" You might also wish to ask, "How big of a douchebag can I be as both a literary agent and a human being before God finally notices me, pinches me by the penis and dangles me and my eternal soul over the mouth of Lucifer?"



Except, of course, we all know you'd already long ago sold your soul to the Giver of Light for a huge seven figure advance and 15%.

According to the Algerian authorities, the wife of Libyan leader Qaddafi along with her three children is in Algeria.

The foreign ministry said in a statement that Col Gaddafi's wife Safia, daughter Ayesha and sons Muhammad and Hannibal left Libya early on Monday. It said they had crossed the border between Libya and Algeria at 08:45 local time (07:45 GMT) on Monday. The first statement of such a move had already come from Libyan rebel headquarters two days ago, and that at the time, Algerian officials rejected that a convoy of six profoundly armored vehicles had crossed the border.

Algeria is an obvious safe heaven for the Gaddafi family as the two countries have a long border and the Algerian government has still not accepted the rebel National Transitional Council (NTC), our correspondent says. "They have been welcomed on humanitarian grounds," Algeria's ambassador to the UN, Mourad Benmehidi, told the BBC World Service.

Algeria's UN ambassador said they were received on compassionate grounds.

In the mean time rebels said they had opened four mass graves in the current days. They were believed to get the corpses of army officers who denied fighting for Col Gaddafi.

The site is near the barracks of the army brigade headed by Col Gaddafi's son Khamis, who activists said may have been murdered in a fighting near Bani Walid. The reports came as Libyan rebels were attempted to defeat the pockets of resistance by Gaddafi loyalists, and planning to advance on Col Gaddafi's birthplace, Sirte. Col Gaddafi's own position is unknown. "The blessed rule of generosity in our culture is something that one has to keep in mind, particularly in the desert region where it's a duty to give help to anybody else."

The NTC spokesman Mahmoud Shamman said: "This would be an act of anger against the Libyan people and against the desires of the Libyan people.  "We will use all legal sources to hunt for the return of these offenders and to bring them to justice in Libya."  Muhammad and Hannibal are two of the sons with the least participation in politics.

Activists had earlier suggested that other sons may be in or close to the Gaddafi stronghold of Sirte.

On Monday, rebel Col Al-Mahdi Al-Haragi was referred as saying Khamis, who has led a frightened military unit accused for a bloodbath last week, had died after being badly injured in a fighting.  Ahmed Bani, Rebel military spokesman said bodies in a group devastated during the clash were burnt beyond respect, but seized soldiers said they were Khamis' bodyguards.

He also said Col Gaddafi's brother-in-law and the head of his intelligence services, Abdullah al-Sanussi, was "about surely killed" in the same conflict.

There were stories prior in the fighting that Khamis had been killed in an air strike, though those reports were later inquired. Alleges prior this month that activists had captured Col Gaddafi's most leading son, Saif al-Islam, turned out not to be true. Rebel fighters have been pushing towards Sirte, and initially capture the small town of Nofilia on their way to the city.

The rebels say they consider Col Gaddafi himself may still be in the Tripoli area.

In the mean time a leaked paper that shows to outline UN proposals for post-conflict Libya calls for up to 200 military observers and 190 UN police to assist in stabilizing the country.

The operation would follow a UN mission with a core staff of 61 civilians for an earlier three month period, according to the report on the website Inner City Press.

Any such strategy would be acted upon only if required by the Libyan transitional authorities and approved by the Security Council, it said.

All of the “Dancing with the Stars” 2011 Season 13 cast rumors are driving me crazy!

Have you heard the latest rumor? Yes,TMZ.com is reporting Nancy Grace“has signed on to 

"Dancing with the Stars.” What! Really? I'm “outraged!” Was Judge Judy not available?

CNN's Nancy Grace is ratings gold, and I hope it's true.

In my Sunday Top 5 column, I suggested fans of “DWTS” tune in to “Bachelor Pad 2” (8 p.m. Tonight, ABC) to find out if some of the most recent rumors are true.

Others who might be on this season:Snooki from “Jersey Shore,” Chaz Bono, David Arquette, Rob Kardashian, Hope Solo, Sheri Shepherd, Christina Milian, Kristin Cavallari, Kim Richards and Ron Artest.

My buddy and “DWTS” blogger Steven Duchon sent me an e-mail yesterday, dishing on rumors that David Arquette was seen walking into the rehearsal studio last Thursday to meet up with his dancing partner Kym Johnson.

“This would seem like a good career choice for Arquette who faced a lot of media scrutiny this past year over his marriage issues with Courtney Cox Arquette. It also gives ABC the opportunity to plant Cox Arquette in the audience to help promote her sitcom “Cougar Town” which coincidentally will air midseason after “Dancing” wraps up,” Duchon said.

Also, TMZ is confirming that Chaz Bono is joining the cast and has been rehearsing with his partner Karina Smirnoff.

Speaking of the professional dancers, it looks like pro dancer Chelsie Hightower will not be coming back. And Louie van Amstel and Dmitry Chaplin also will be MIA from the dancing cast

“However, we will be getting three new pros, one of them being 'DWTS' pro Maksim Chmerkovskiy’s younger brother Val,” Duchon said.

Photo courtesy Republic Airport

A sky as blue as one found in a child's storybook greeted the New York City area after Hurricane Irene, but missing from the picture early this morning was the normally ubiquitous presence of airplanes. To people living in this region - home to three major commercial airports and four major airports for business, charter and general aviation - the last time aviation shut down to this extent was September 11, 2001.

Sure, Irene had the airlines cancelling thousands of flights - running 24/7 they've got experience and manpower to handle it. (See this spooky shot of JFK Airport from Frank Van Haste's blog here.) When it comes to business and general aviation, it's the very unusual scenario that has them packing up and flying out of town.

The exodus began late last week and increased in intensity as the weather forecasts became more dire.
Planes were ferried to Pennsylvania and upstate New York and to anywhere their owners could find hangar space. "We didn't now how bad it was going to be, so we wanted to be sure we were prepared," said Michael Geiger, airport director at Republic Airport in Farmingdale, New York, which is home to more than 500 mostly single and twin engine piston aircraft.

Photo courtesy Republic Airport

Though Geiger didn't know how many, a number of planes were flown to inland airports. Shortly before our conversation this morning, five of the planes belonging to the flight school of Farmingdale State College had returned.

They were not so lucky at Teterboro Airport, just nine feet above sea level, the airport remained closed today as workers tried to clean up. The plan is to open the airport tomorrow. Wisely, there were no airplanes left on the ramp during the storm, and damage was confined to the airport.

Thirty-five miles northeast, Westchester County Airport is busy, busy, busy taking the flights intended for the New Jersey airport and closing the short runway - 11/29 - so that the planes destined for Teterboro have a place to park while waiting for the airport to reopen.

Photo by and with permission of Steve Ferguson

Good thing then, that the most dramatic post-Irene activity happened earlier today when three touring World War II warbirds belonging to the Collings Foundation departed after their annual visit to the airport went soggy. Airport executive and aviation enthusiast, Steve Ferguson was out on the airfield seeing them off and taking photos of the P-51 Mustang, the B-24 Liberator and B-17 Flying Fortress, all of which were in town for the annual Wings of Freedom visit.

Photo by and with permission of Steve Ferguson

Ordinarily, when the planes are here, the foundation sells walk-through tours, flight experiences and even flight training.  But on Saturday, when it became a wash-out, Landmark Aviation one of the FBOs at the airport did some shuffling in its hangar. "Landmark Aviation was very gracious to move some planes around in their hangars to make room," said Hunter Chaney marketing director for the foundation.


 Westchester is my local airport and I am accustomed to hearing the general aviation and regional traffic, so as I took my early morning walk it was odd to see the perfect flying conditions and hear everything but airplanes; the birds, the leaf blowers, the chain saws and the electric generators were all making their post-hurricane music, but I need not have worried. The corporate jets started making their presence known before I had my morning coffee and as I write this blog, even the noisy Piaggio is back.

The Ex-Destiny's Child singer even supervised to overtake Lady Gaga in drag, who gained two awards and Katy Perry – also recognizes Mrs Russell Brand – who won three, counting video of the year.

The MTV VMAs yearly turn up the volume on disclosures and shameful acts by the world's top singers and bands.

Last year it was Lady Gaga's meat dress and the year before the Kanye West and Taylor Swift talking incident.

But anybody saw the Beyonce's pregnancy coming – apart from her husband, the rapper Jay-Z.

Beyoncé, whose hits comprise "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)," first come out on the red carpet, posed for photographers and used up her arms to draw the baby bump her long gown.

She afterward performed her song "Love On Top," telling the audience to stand up and saying, "I would like you to feel the love that's rising inside of me."Finally, she took off her jacket, smiled mostly and rubbed her tummy.

In the viewers, Jay-Z was applauded by Kanye West and he gave Beyoncé a big wave.

Lady Gaga launched the VMAs singing her song "You and I" and dressed in drag as her male alter ego, Joe Calderone. She stayed in the imaginary character entire the program and acknowledged awards for best female video and best message video for her song, "Born This Way."

"I feel so consecrated to be here," Lady Gaga said onstage, holding the MTV moonman carving for best female singer. "It doesn't matter how you are – gay, straight, bi, lesbian, transgendered -- you were born this way."

The other big victor of the night was Perry, who took home video of the year with her successful song and video for "Firework."

She also obtained best alliance for "E.T." featuring Kanye West, and a small trophy for special effects with "E.T."

Perry, who is recognized for attractive and vibrant dressing accepted her award with a cube-shaped hat on her head.

"I'm very proud of the song, she said. "I feel like I am making incredible right when I sing (it)."

Other awards went to Justin Bieber for best male video with "U Smile," and Tyler, The Creator took home the MTV moonman for best new singer with "Yonkers."

Britney Spears made the honor of having the best pop video with "Till the World Ends." She was also given the unusual honor of the Michael Jackson video vanguard award.

Foo Fighters swiped best rock video and Nicki Minaj, in a vibrant costume she said was enthused by Tokyo and its Harajuku district, took best hip-hop video for "Super Bass."

Shut out of the top awards was British singer Adele, who has been cresting charts for weeks with her hit album "21" and its singles counting "Rolling in the Deep." But "Rolling" did run to make awards in small group of art direction, cinematography, and editing.

Highlights counting a duet by Jay-Z and Kanye West, singing a song from their new album, "Watch the Throne," and Lil Wayne closed the show earlier of his new album's release.

Legendary soul singer Tony Bennett and pop star Bruno Mars participate in an honor to the late soul singer Amy Winehouse, who currently died. Bennett said some people just have aptitude and others don't.

"Amy had the whole gift," Bennett said.

MIAMI (Reuters) - For Republican presidential nominee Michele Bachmann, Hurricane Irene and last week's earthquake in the eastern America were a message from God that Washington necessitates to amend its policies.

Even as Irene was starting its raking course up the East Coast over the weekend, which killed 21 people and caused prevalent flooding and power outages, Bachmann told senior inhabitants in Poinciana, Florida, on Saturday that the hurricane was an "act of God" that Washington should notice.

The Minnesota congresswoman, who has obtained media importance for her blazing attacks on Democratic President Barack Obama and against full-size government, reminded Washington and the east had already felt a 5.8 magnitude earthquake on Tuesday.

"Washington, D.C., you'd considered already they'd find the message. An earthquake, a hurricane. Are you listening? The US people have made everything they can, and now it's time for an act of God and we're receiving it," she said, drawing some hoots from her addressees.

Bachmann is a preferred of the fiscally conservative Tea Party movement and of religious social conservatives, but fresh Republican presidential nominee polls have shown her lagging behind Texas Governor Rick Perry and moderate Mitt Romney, who requests to the party's business wing.

It would be easy to dismiss the failures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in New Orleans six years ago today on Monday, August 29, 2005, thusly:



It was a storm of virtually unprecedented size and ferocity, so much so that levees, pump stations and emergency preparedness plans were immediately overwhelmed. And, up to a point, that was true. Katrina's rainfall extended from the Gulf Coast up to, amazingly, much of northern New England and even Canada. In terms of sheer, destructive, landscape-altering power, the likes of Katrina hadn't been seen since 1969's Hurricane Camille.



But, of course, it doesn't explain all the failures of local, state and especially the federal government. As disaster tends to do, the heroism of individuals came to the fore, such as that 21 year-old man who essentially commandeered a bus and drove dozens of refugees all the way to Houston.



And, as far as police, media, military and government authorities, Katrina brought out the worst in them as well as highlighting their real attitude and ultimate agenda toward a vulnerable citizenry. In short, Hurricane Katrina was a harsh headmistress instructing us as to how not to conduct an emergency response and she betrayed the shocking inhumanity of those in power toward those not in power, including passive and active racism that resulted in the deaths of nearly 2000 innocents.



Since Irene made landfall and hit New England just yesterday right after being downgraded to a tropical storm, I think I speak for millions when I say we breathed a sigh of relief not only at the far lesser damage she'd left in her wake than her big sister Katrina but relief that we didn't have to rely on Uncle Sam to bail us out.



It would literally require a book or a long miniseries documentary to list all the failures in judgment and humanity before, during and after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.



These failures actually began to quietly rack up back in 2002 when George W. Bush denied the necessary funds to the Army Corps of Engineers the money they needed to fix the levees and pump stations. By this time, the New Orleans levees was a stereotypical government project: Ongoing for roughly 80 years by Katrina's landfall, it still had never been completed. Later, the Army Corps of Engineers, not the Bush administration, was sued for its negligence. Years later, the Bush administration had the chutzpah to request that Louisiana pay the ACOE $1.5 billion to help complete work on the levee.



Just a year before Katrina, a computer simulation was done to see how a Category 5 hurricane would affect New Orleans. The fictional storm, Hurricane Pam, provided the scientists with data that would prove stunningly prescient: The simulation predicted that 80% of the city would be under as much as 20 feet of water and would pack winds over 150 mph. The only miscalculation was that Katrina, at the height of her fury, was packing winds of 185 mph.



The Bush administration paid a GOP-friendly New Orleans consulting firm, IEM or Innovative Emergency Management, $500,000 to draft out a disaster evacuation plan that was apparently never written. “We can’t find your plan. Neither can FEMA,” the BBC's Greg Palast told an IEM representative who was hiding behind a glass wall. “I guess it’s kind of hard to evacuate a city if you can’t find the plan itself.”



Meanwhile, back in Crawford, in between ignoring Cindy Sheehan and going to GOP fundraisers, Bush was getting briefed by Michael Brown, head of FEMA (by now long since demoted to below a Cabinet-level position) and NHC's then director, Max Mayfield, tried to brief the "president" about the storm's likely outcome, including the topping if not the breaching of the levees. Bush then cut his vacation short... to go on another GOP fundraiser in San Diego so he could compare himself to FDR.



Was this a lapse in judgment on Bush's part? Sure. But there were several. The day Katrina made landfall, Bush helped John McCain celebrate his 69th birthday and had cake with him. He also got a guitar and played it while hundreds drowned, thereby becoming the Nero of the 21st century.



Then, when his vacation was officially over, Bush did flyovers to view the damage but not low enough to see the half-eaten corpses of African Americans and alligators floating in the streets of the French Quarter in highly toxic water nor to see the coffins that had been washed from what was supposed to be their final resting places.





Then Bush landed, thereby grounding rescue helicopters so he could tell former horse inspector Michael Brown, "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie."

Geraldo Rivera of Fox News September 5, 2005 in perhaps his finest hour from a dark and damp Convention Center packed with 25,000 refugees. The Convention Center wasn't built to take in even one.

Sure, part of Geraldo's conduct was theater but underpinning that was a shocked disbelief shared by many of us that our government could be so cruel, callous and essentially worthless in the face of a storm. That same night, from the Super Dome, Shep Smith had a similar epiphany and was practically screaming at the injustice of the horrors he was witnessing while host Sean Hannity sat in his climate-controlled sound stage 1500 miles away and calmly but idiotically asked Smith for "context." 55,000 people were packed into two large buildings with no food, water or medical aid while all those things and more awaited them on the other end of the bridge.



Meanwhile, Blackwater, arriving in New Orleans unannounced, would eventually get $70,000,000 of "security" contracts from the Bush administration while Halliburton would get billions in cleanup contracts over local businesses and would qualify for small business tax breaks simply because the oil services behemoth didn't ordinarily get cost-plus no-bid cleanup contracts. Then Bush tried to suspend the Bacon-Davis Act so that the people doing the actual cleanup would get paid under minimum wage.



The USS Bataan sat off the coast waiting to have their 800 hospital beds filled and saw not one occupied. The ship also had the capacity to desalinize daily 100,000 gallons of salt water yet was not used.



70 nations had pledged and offered well over a billion dollars in money and aid and we'd refused it with the arrogance of a pirate captain who would not allow his crew to be rescued by another ship. Wal-Mart trucks trying to deliver water and ice were diverted from where it was needed the most to where it wasn't needed. It looked, for all the world, as if the Bush administration was committing genocide under our very noses.



The aftermath was hardly any better. Charter schools began replacing the public schools so that the children who'd once attended those schools could no longer afford to go to them. Houses and entire neighborhoods were razed and replaced by luxury condos. The gentrification had begun and Mardi Gras suddenly started looking a lot whiter.



The former residents of NOLA were shunted to tiny trailers bought by FEMA that contained dangerously high levels of formaldehyde. Right wing cocksuckers like Neal Boortz began calling the victims "scumbags" for being unfortunate enough to get in the way of Katrina and embarrassing the Bush administration. Their jobs were gone, their homes were gone and, in many cases, their families were gone.



Then in 2009, just days before leaving an office that he'd shamelessly stolen while being stupendously unqualified for it, Bush snarled at mild media criticism over Katrina and claimed that he'd rescued 30,000 people as if the 1800 deaths were unavoidable and unworthy of mention. Let me know if I've forgotten anything because I know I have.



The overall impression we were getting from both the media and the government was that, at the slightest sign of anarchy, black people would immediately resort to barbarism and rape, kill and loot at the first opportunity. The facts speak otherwise: It was the white people, especially those in unaffected Algiers Point and the New Orleans Police Department, especially at the Danziger bridge, who were the ones who'd resorted to barbarism.



Note that I am not providing the usual linkage because these and many other clusterfucks, the countless hundreds of moral, mental and administrative failures are, I would hope, eternally etched into our collective memory. These and many other stories that didn't make the grade for the 5 and 10 o'clock news should serve as a referendum that our government, especially when run by right wingers, is far more prone to position itself rather than the infrastructure and its citizenry for damage control.



And when the government's credibility is impugned, no matter who's in power, we the people will be snarled at and eventually deemed expendable.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – Heavy rain and strong winds from Hurricane Irene arrived in Rhode Island on Sunday morning, knocking down trees and power lines and leaving 155,000 customers of National Grid, the state's electricity supplier, without electricity.

National Grid spokeswoman Debbie Drew says the company is "working hard" to restore service to customers, but it could take hours or days until everyone's electricity is restored. National Grid has 477,000 customers in Rhode Island.

The good news for Rhode Islanders is that meteorologists have downgraded the storm from a Category 1 hurricane to a tropical storm, and state police say no injuries or fatalities have been reported.

Wind gusts reached 45 mph and are expected to increase up to 70 mph, according to Lt. Col. Denis Riel, a spokesman for the Rhode Island National Guard. Besides the strong winds, the storm is bringing heavy rain. Up to four inches of rain are expected.

"We are being impacted differently than North Carolina, but we still expect a very significant storm surge this afternoon," says Melissa Withers, a spokeswoman for the city of Providence.

Providence's Fox Point Hurricane Barrier, a 25-foot-high, 3,000-foot-long structure built in 1966 to prevent floodwaters from damaging the city, was closed this morning. Before the barrier was built, downtown Providence was inundated with several feet of water during hurricanes in 1938 and 1954.

Providence officials have not called for residents to evacuate, but inhabitants in areas of at least 16 Rhode Island towns and cities were told to leave their homes to seek shelter elsewhere in mandatory and voluntary evacuations, according to the state's Emergency Management Agency.

Mandatory evacuations were ordered in areas of several coastal towns and cities, including Westerly, Narragansett and South Kingstown.

Many towns and cities, including Providence, banned parking on streets, and all state campgrounds are closed.

Power was lost Sunday morning at state police headquarters in North Scituate, and the facility is running on generator power, says Lt. Col. Raymond White, a state police spokesman. An occupied state police car was damaged when a tree fell on it in a state trooper's driveway in North Kingstown, White says.

White says flooding has been minor but is increasing in the state's southern coastal areas. All airline flights at the state's biggest airport, T.F. Green in Warwick, are canceled, though the airport is open for emergency flights. Airport officials say they expect airline flights to resume Monday morning.

Some Rhode Island colleges adjusted schedules in anticipation of the storm. Rhode Island College told students to move in Monday instead of today, and Providence College told some freshmen scheduled to arrive Sunday to come a day later.

At the Newport Yacht Club, about 55 boats were removed from the water before the storm to avoid damage, says Rudy Borgueta, the club's steward.

Providence's popular music venue, Lupo's Heartbreak Hotel, postponed a concert by Tab Benoit on Saturday night, but the American Idol summer tour went on as scheduled at the Dunkin Donuts Center.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid42757819001?bctid=1133067350001

Personally, I would've preferred impeachment but as long as we got Rep. Pete King out of Congress...



Consider this an open thread. Tell me about your Hurricane (or tropical storm) Irene stories. Posting will be light while I work on the new Assclowns of the Week.

Photo of HPN on Saturday by Chuck Allen

Some of  America's most active business airports would be - should be, having one of their most active weekends on this, the last weekend before the Labor Day holiday. Instead they look like this desolate scene at Westchester County Airport in White Plains, New York.

In anticipation of Hurricane Irene, Westchester, Republic and Teterboro are reporting airfields that have become ghost towns. My friend, Chuck Allen, a pilot and member of the Westchester Flying Club spend part of Saturday afternoon watching a lot of takeoffs...and no landings...as people moved their airplanes out of the path of the hurricane. 

"When it comes to weather, pilots usually pay attention," Chuck told me in an email after writing to share with me the very odd sight of these normally hectic airports with all but tumbleweeds rolling down the airfield by this evening. 

"Probably 70-80% of the planes normally parked at Panorama were not there," Chuck reported, referring to Panorama Flight Service, one of the fixed base operators at Westchester County.

Ian, working in the operations office at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, wouldn't even take a guess at how many planes were moved elsewhere in preparation for the storm, but he's the one who characterized the place as a "ghost town" this evening.

Photo of HPN on Saturday by Chuck Allen

Its not much of a stretch to imagine that general aviation and business airports from North Carolina to Massachusetts were also sending planes out at a steady clip. I'm guessing anyone inland with hangar space to spare has been approached by friends, friends-of-friends, and probably even complete strangers asking if - by squeezing and shuffling - more room could be made to put another airplane or two indoors.

"The airplanes on the field are either in hangars or tied down with tiedown hooks in the pavements," I was told by the operations officer at Republic Airport in Long Island, which will shut down if and when winds reach a sustained 65mph. 

In an email to members of the Meetup group for Northeast Pilots, Clark Burgard offered a number of helpful tips to airplane owners; including using ropes with some elasticity to allow for shock absorption and reminders to secure step ladders and chocks as well as planes. That small stuff can do big damage when it gets tossed around the airfield by high winds. Clark moved his plane to Rochester,  New York on Friday, an airport he chose because "it was out of the way of the storm, even if Irene tracked more inland."  

The last commercial flight to Westchester County Airport arrived at 6:00 p.m. Saturday and the airport will remain closed until Monday at 3:00 p.m., reflecting optimism that for all the wind and rain, Irene will not create lingering problems. Life back to normal by end of the day on Monday? We shall see.

Jim Carrey used to be the biggest movie star in the world. I know you probably know that, having seen Ace Ventura and Dumb and Dumber or even The Truman Show a hundred times, but it's worth remembering and keeping in mind while watching the below video, which Carrey posted at his website called, for real, Jim Carrey Tru Life. This video, which is about a minute and a half long and shot in extreme closeup, is Carrey's profession of love to Emma Stone. It is exactly as creepy and unsettling as it sounds. Take a look below.

The other videos on the site appear to be really genuine, including what he saw on a recent trip to Brazil (while flanked by bodyguards) and a kind of video confessional about his early career filmed while riding on a private plane. There's therefore no immediate reason to assume that the Emma Stone video is actually a joke, though taking it seriously is far too depressing and disturbing to be an option either. What, exactly, is he trying to tell us here? Why on earth would he record this video, and especially in such extreme close-up that reveals lines on face that do not look like normal wrinkles. And if this is his attempt to bring comedy to the website, why start with something that's so borderline, and so difficult to see as a joke?

Yes, I realize that Carrey famously played Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon, and this kind of stunt seems exactly like what Kaufman would have done if he'd lived long enough to see YouTube. But I still can't quite get the joke here, if there's supposed to be one, and either way the video feels like a fairly sad reminder of the movie star who no longer really exists. Emma Stone, I hope wherever you are, you're somehow less creeped out by this than I would be. 

Japan's government guesstimates the total of radioactive caesium-137 discharged by the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe until now is equivalent to that of 168 Hiroshima bombs.

Government nuclear professionals, however, said the World War II bomb explosion and the mishap reactor meltdowns at Fukushima, which has seen continuing radiation seeps out but no casualties so far, were beyond assessment.

The quantity of caesium-137 discharged since the three reactors were crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami has been approximated at 15,000 tera becquerels, the Tokyo Shimbun reported, referring an authorities calculation.

That compares with the 89 tera becquerels discharged by "Little Boy", the uranium bomb the United States dropped on the western Japanese city in the last days of World War II, the report said.

The estimate was put forward by Prime Minister Naoto Kan's cabinet to a lower house committee on backing of technology and modernism, the daily said.

The government, however, disagreed that the comparison was not convincing.

While the Hiroshima bomb declared most of its sufferers in the powerful heat-wave of a mid-air nuclear blast and the extreme radioactive fallout from its flourishing cloud, no such nuclear blasts hit Fukushima.

There, the radiation has leaked from molten fuel inside reactors destroyed by hydrogen blasts.

"An atomic bomb is intended to enable mass-killing and mass-devastation by causing explosion waves and heat rays and discharging neutron radiation," the Tokyo Shimbun daily referred a government official as saying. "It is not rational to do a simple comparison only on basis of the quantity of isotopes discharged."

Government authorities were not instantly available to verify the report.

The blinding explosion of the Hiroshima bomb and its fallout killed some 140,000 people, either immediately or in the days and weeks that gone behind as higher radiation or dreadful burns took their toll.

At Fukushima, Japan pronounced a 20-kilometre (12 mile) evacuation and no-go zone around the plant after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami hit the world's most awful nuclear mishap since Chernobyl 25 years ago.

A newly government survey revealed some regions within the 20-kilometre zone are infected with radiation equal to in excess of 500 millisieverts per year – 25 times more than the government's yearly limit.

I always say that a day without a Pravda-esque announcement by Republican National Committee Chairman Rinsed Penis that other wild and crazy Republican guy out of Wisconsin is like a day without sunshine. This landed in my inbox last night, courtesy of Mrs. JP:

Dear ,



Our Party has a great slate of conservative candidates vying for the Republican presidential nomination who can defeat Barack Obama's Billion Dollar money machine and reverse the damage his left-wing agenda has inflicted on our economy and freedoms.



, you and your fellow Republican grassroots leaders will determine through primary voting who our nominee will be. But right now, I need an update on who you would vote for if the primary in your state were held today.



So please take a moment right now to do two very important things for me:



1. Cast your vote in the RNC's Presidential Straw Poll. This is your opportunity to voice your support for your favorite candidate.

2. Make a special campaign contribution of $25, $50, $100 or more to help our Party lay the foundation to elect your choice for Republican president and more GOP candidates in your state.



Your individual vote will not be shared with any of the possible Republican presidential candidates. Only compiled results will be released -- when you contribute you can see the results in real time.



Barack Obama will raise over a BILLION DOLLARS. The RNC is the ONLY Party committee permitted by federal law that can help counter him by providing direct financial support to our presidential nominee. Regardless of who our eventual nominee will be, there is truly no more important priority for our Party -- or our country -- than recapturing the White House in 2012.



In just over two and a half years, President Obama's radical leftist policies have led to the loss of more than 2 million jobs, over 6 million foreclosures, $500 billion in higher taxes and yearly trillion dollar deficits.



Now he's raising money hand-over-fist -- $86 million in just three months -- to secure another term in the Oval Office so he can fully implement his socialist schemes that will ultimately bankrupt our country, lead to the government takeover of health care and the demise of Medicare, and put us in hock to creditors like communist China for generations to come.



Obama and the Democrats had their chance to lead -- and they failed miserably. To turn our country around, we must elect a Republican President of the United States in 2012.



So please take this opportunity to make your voice heard by participating in the RNC's Presidential Straw Poll... and then help our Party take back the White House, regain complete control of Congress and elect more GOP governors in 2012 by making a campaign contribution of $25, $50, $100 or more to the RNC today.



, your commitment and generous support is the only way we can make Barack Obama a one-term president and stop his liberal assault on our country's prosperity and freedoms. Please let me hear from you today. Thank you.

Dear Comrade Penis:



As borderline hot lesbian Rachel Maddow pointed out a week ago, "I know that hypocrisy is the crime that has no punishment in politics." And in that respect, Republicans have been very prolific criminals in berating the President for going on a summer vacation from their golf clubs despite Mr. Obama having taken a third of the vacation time as George W. Bush at this time in his first term. And, of course, as Maddow also pointed out with her usual liberal vitriol, the Republican who screams the loudest about Obama's Canadian Darth Vader bus will get their own.



But you, Mr. Chairman, are continuing that proud Republican tradition of hypocrisy with impunity by preemptively screaming from the rafters about Obama raising a billion dollars when in fact he's yet to raise even a tenth of that amount. And how dare our Chief Executive even think about raising any money to keep his job? That's something allowed only by Republicans, such as George W. Bush collecting over $200,000,000 just for the GOP primary in his reelection bid in 2004 and over a third of a billion overall.



Indeed, Mr. Bush's top 20 campaign contributors from 2004 reads like a Who's Who of the SEC's Top Ten Most wanted:

Morgan Stanley $603,480

Merrill Lynch $586,254

PricewaterhouseCoopers $514,250

UBS AG $474,325

Goldman Sachs $394,600

Lehman Brothers $361,525

MBNA Corp $350,350

Credit Suisse Group $326,040

Citigroup Inc $320,820

Bear Stearns $313,150

Ernst & Young $305,140

US Government $295,786

Deloitte LLP $292,250

Wachovia Corp $279,310

US Dept of Defense $279,157

Ameriquest Capital $253,130

Blank Rome LLP $225,150

US Dept of State $223,330

Bank of America $218,261

AT&T Inc $214,920

Note that Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers are, sadly, no longer with us despite them giving nearly $675,000 to an administration that left them to twist in the wind and to be made an example of to prove just how serious the 2008 financial meltdown was.



However, the other top 20 contributors, including Merrill Lynch, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Wachovia, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, subprime mortgage emperors Ameriquest Capital, AT&T, Inc., MBNA, Credit Suisse Group, Deloitte LLP, UBS AG, Citigroup and Ernst & Young all enjoy colorful reputations to this day that are beyond reproach.



Mitt Romney, who would surely bring about a second golden age of the corporate presidency that had served us so well between 2001-2009, raised more cash from lobbyists than all the other Republican contenders combined.



As for the "great slate of conservative candidates" opposing the Socialist Obama (under whom Wall Street somehow valiantly manages to turn a handsome profit quarter after quarter), indeed, we are faced with such a dazzling array of conservative worthies as to plunge the entire nation into comfortable numbness and paralysis. Indeed, when a virtual unknown such as Jon Huntsman can "inject excitement" into the presidential race by quitting his job a la Sarah Palin, then the indecision regarding we Republican voters is understandable.



I remain yours, Comrade Penis, in solidarity and unthinking loyalty.



Your humble and obedient servant,

JP

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari Goldstein)



"In a Democracy, nothing good has to happen in secret; and nothing good ever does. Secrecy is the enemy of Democracy. The more we allow our government to act outside of public accountability and the Rule of Law, the less it is our government, and the more it becomes instead an authoritarian occupying police state." - VoiceofV



"(I)t’s always a good day when you can bag a sand nigger." - NYPD cop after unlawfully arresting Prof. Ravi Shankar



When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross. - Misattributed to Sinclair Lewis



In a somewhat gentler, more trusting age, John Keats in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" synonymized truth with beauty. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth and all ye need to know."



Unfortunately, with industrialization and the inevitable acceleration of destructive technologies, the resultant paranoia and geopolitical intrigue, the truth is often not as beautiful as Keats preferred to think in 1819. Often, it's downright fucking hideous with enough bad guys, good intentions and shortcuts to Hell to fill both Snake Plissken movies.



The front page, above-the-fold story on the Huffington Post was a disturbing one even to people who keep as suspicious an eye on the NYPD as it keeps on those in the New York/New Jersey area. The United States, at least technically and officially, does not have a national police force (not even the FBI qualifies but more on them later). Yet this "mission creep" on the part of the NYPD, often operating an hour or more beyond their jurisdiction (New Jersey) but given unprecedented latitude by the federal government, is but the first step in the establishment of that dreaded national police department. And the establishment of a national police state is surely one of the unmistakable hallmarks of the beginning of Fascism. But before we can begin to fully appreciate the emerging and self-denying fascist state of affairs in the Land of the Free, we must first begin to remember when America really was a democracy in which due process and the rule of law was actually respected and enforced.



To begin with, the National Security Act of 1947 forbade the CIA from domestic surveillance, a fact that the CIA, even on its website, seems loath to admit it, as does, strangely, the Wikipedia entry on the subject. It was possibly the most important or at least the most transformative legislation ever signed by President Truman. It established the creation of the US Air Force, and federalized both the military and intelligence communities into much the same organizational framework that was in place until George W. Bush came along 55 years later with his own transformative but far less efficacious agenda.



The CIA's handcuffing on domestic matters did nothing to temper their desire to tamper in them and the names of their operations and general attitude was one of contempt for both the legislative (which funds it) and executive branch. It's no longer the realm of conspiracy theory to say that the CIA had funded assassination programs abroad (Operation Phoenix, which, contrary to popular reports, was not shut down at the end of '72 but continued through to the 80's in Iran). More widely-known but less understood was the now-infamous MK ULTRA assassination program barely touched on in the opening chapter of Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine.



The Central Intelligence Agency had overthrown several left wing governments and helped install corporate-friendly right wing dictatorships, most notoriously Pinochet's Chile on September 11, 1973. Ergo, it only follows that the CIA would establish its tentacular reach within our borders and get around the National Security Act by working in collusion with city law enforcement agencies such as the NYPD.



However, the NYPD, rather than being a mere proxy for the CIA in its domestic surveillance and racial/religious profiling, is also overstepping its jurisdictional boundaries, often operating across the river in New Jersey, an hour beyond its jurisdiction. At some point, the NYPD will reach a point of entropy beyond which they will cease being as effective as they as an intelligence-gathering apparatus. But no one as yet knows where that point is, much less where their extrajudicial jurisdiction extends. Yet where ever that is, often it does so without the knowledge of state or city government and even the FBI is left in the dark.



The usually supine New York Times, of course, chose not to get in on this action although another article in the US section that also came out this morning reveals that the FBI, which has been locked out from this CIA/NYPD connection, was nevertheless engaged in the same activity and, for the most part, pulled up a wide but empty net, even resorting to instigating and entrapping terrorism suspects. But, at the very least, it shows that the nation's top law enforcement agency and top intelligence agency are on the same page whether or not they know it.



But the CIA's recent meddling in domestic affairs is certainly not a new one. Just 20 years after Truman's National Security Act, the CIA developed Operation Chaos, not to be confused with the equally farcical KAOS of Get Smart infamy. Operation Chaos was intended to investigate foreign influence upon student demonstrators and other antiwar activists.



In today's time, such blatantly illegal racial profiling has resulted in countless violations of civil liberties of countless citizens, such as the arrest, release and paying off of Ravi Shankar (no relation to the sitar master). We've known for years the TSA under the advisement of the intelligence community, has put well over 100,000 Americans on terrorist watch and No-Fly lists, including the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. When one adds up the tote board, the safest rule of thumb for one to adopt is, If it's a government agency, it's out to get you.



Escapades From LA



Now, let's consider Posse Comitatus, the 1878 law forbidding (Ha, ha) the Commander in Chief from putting federal troops on the streets of America. It was barely over three years ago that we were treated to this shockingly clueless (no one once ever mentioned Posse Comitatus) and brainlessly breezy news report about 2300 Marines landing in Indiana and all over the Midwest for what was obviously martial law exercises.



The militarization of our urban police since the creation of SWAT teams in the 1960's is due largely to the sale of items ranging from handguns to tanks between the DoD and law enforcement agencies such as the NYPD and LAPD. This is a legitimate concern that crosses ideological boundaries. 14 years ago, it was addressed by World Net Daily's Joseph Farah in "The militarization of the domestic police." Said the usually factually- and lucidity-challenged Farah:

What gives? Why is all this deadly hardware purchased with U.S. taxpayer dollars to fight foreign enemies now being turned on unsuspecting American civilians at the very moment they are being disarmed by local, state and federal governments?



The militarization of local police departments is getting so brazen even many local governments are having second thoughts about the program. In Los Angeles, for instance, one of the nation's biggest police departments is saying it was a mistake to accept the bayonets and is shipping them back to the Army.



More than 6,400 surplus bayonets went to law enforcement agencies between Oct. 1, 1996 and Sept. 30, 1997, according to the federal Defense Logistics Agency in Washington. But what on earth would domestic police departments do with bayonets?



For once I agree with the American Civil Liberties Union.

Farah's outrage was obviously channeled through a purely libertarian/2nd Amendment prism ("at the very moment (we) are being disarmed by local, state and federal governments") but his concern is nonetheless a very valid one shared by both sides of the Great Ideological Divide. Why were 6400 bayonets sold to local law enforcement during that year?



And, it only follows whether or not one has corroborating evidence, that a Central Intelligence Agency that would act complicitly with the NYPD would also do the same thing with the other massive police presence on the other coast: The LAPD. We know the government has heavily militarized the LAPD. Why not use them to spy on Latino communities and even to exterminate them by arranging drug trafficking by coordinating with the LAPD (Anyone who's even heard the late Gary Webb's name knows what I'm talking about)? If you're going to violate the letter of a law as large and as important as the National Security Act, you might as well get your money's worth and go for broke. And why stop at the coasts? Why not also involve other large police departments in the flyover states? Frankly, I'm amazed the authors of the HuffPo article never even raised that all-but-certain possibility that the CIA is spying on the entire United States through local law enforcement proxies. We've known for 6 years that the NSA was doing so with the collusion of the telecom giants and at the behest of the Bush administration.



The CIA's incredibly cynical view of minorities in South Central and East LA in coordinating with the LAPD, since the Bobby Kennedy assassination widely seen as "a lapdog for the CIA", borders on genocide. In using the Los Angeles Police Department to ensure a steady flow of drugs coming into LA, the CIA thought it was establishing plausible deniability that it had been violating the National Security Act.



Meanwhile, Uncle Sam's jihad against Muslim communities continues regardless of a recent Gallup poll that stated 93% of American Muslims remained loyal to the US government that has merely ramped up surveillance and entrapping them. If you insist on drawing blood and you pick at the same patch of skin long enough, then eventually you'll get your wish and draw blood.



The FBI, aided with all sorts of dodgy, PATRIOT Act federal laws that criminalize noncrimes by prefacing them "conspiracies to commit...", has set up a Minority Report setup whereby previously innocent men are tempted to commit terrorist acts and charged with crimes they hadn't actually committed. Considering that bigotry and cynicism to which ordinarily law-abiding Muslims have been subjected have already embittered them, an asset or paid informant (of which the FBI has many, such as Agent Provocateur Hal Turner) wouldn't have to work very hard to radicalize them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.



Yet once word gets out at how much Muslim Americans are maligned and religiously profiled by the very government to which they inexplicably swear unswerving allegiance, the FBI's post COINTELPRO actions could eat up that patriotic capital very quickly. And then we'll have a very real Muslim problem with which to contend.