Burma Air Drops

Barbara Stocking explains that simply dropping food into Burma is much harder than it sounds. [A]ir drops are not the aid equivalent of smart bombs. Running a humanitarian effort from the skies, like running a purely airborne war, is fraught with problems. For a start it requires excellent intelligence. Yet no one knows exactly where the worst affected areas are, or how ...

China Earthquake Tragedy: People Don’t Really Matter

Dave Schuler rounds up several press accounts of the massive earthquake damage in China, which has killed untold tens of thousands of people. Most notable is the number of schools that collapsed, dooming the children inside. He concludes, It’s not for a lack of money: China is holding nearly a half trillion dollars worth of U. S. Treasury ...

Is It Time to Invade Burma?

Romesh Ratnesar takes to the pages of TIME to ask, in apparent seriousness, "Is It Time to Invade Burma?" The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas ...

U.S. Embassy Helps Americans in Burma Cyclone - The Bastards!

Steven Royster, Spokesman for the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs, had this to say of the tragic cyclone which has killed tens of thousands of people in Burma: When a crisis like this strikes around the world, the Department of State’s first thought is for the safety of American citizens. As the storm brewed offshore, colleagues at the ...

10,000 Died!!

Well actually it was 12, but don't tell Barack Obama that! "In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people died—an entire town destroyed," the Democratic presidential candidate said in a speech to 500 people packed into a sweltering Richmond art studio for a fundraiser. Yeah, guess I missed it. As the Illinois senator concluded ...

First Bees, Now Fish?

A couple of months ago, I noted that there was a mysterious epidemic centered around the world's beehives. Now it appears that another ailment may be threatening our freshwater fish.A virus in the U.S. Great Lakes that has killed tens of thousands of fish in recent years is spreading and poses a threat to inland fish farming, a U.S. ...

Deadly Tornadoes Sweep South

At least fourteen people were killed in a wave of tornadoes that struck Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri. A powerful storm system packing tornadoes that killed at least seven people in Alabama and one other in Missouri is being blamed for nine more deaths in Georgia, a state official said early Friday. The storm, which swept through Georgia Thursday night, killed ...

Beltway Blizzard Bumper Cars

On a day when DC area schools are shut down for miles in each direction because of something on the order of one inch of snow, Stacy McCain reflects on the phenomenon of "Beltway blizzard bumper cars." Ignoring common cautions most Americans learned as 15-year-olds — e.g., always check your blind spot before changing lanes to your right — D.C. drivers ...

Bees Facing Catastrophic Epidemic

A mysterious ailment is having a catastrophic effect on the nation's bee population.A mysterious disease is killing off U.S. honeybees, threatening to disrupt pollination of a range of crops and costing beekeepers hundreds of thousands of dollars, industry experts said on Monday. Beekeepers in 22 states have reported losses of up to 80 percent of their colonies in recent weeks, leaving ...

Hurricane Predictions Off By Wide Margin

Over the past year there were predictions about how bad hurricanes were going to get (example). That we should expect more and stronger hurricanes. One problem though, so far this hurricane season is one of the least active in decades. So what happened? Lots. Storms were starved for fuel after ingesting masses of dry Saharan dust and air over the ...

Overdue Rental Car? Or Lucky to be Alive? PNW Floods

In case you missed the 7/24 news reports last week, the Pacific Northwest got slammed by the “Pineapple Express,” a series of relatively warm major storms that blasted Oregon, Washington, and BC*. These storms gave torrential downpours of rain, rather than the seasonally expected snow, causing massive flooding. But imagine you were just a tourist, trapped behind floodwaters. Are you ...

The Hurricane Katrina Goldmine

This article from the Cato Institute paints a very depressing image of President Bush's bail out for New Orleans and the areas affected by hurricane Katrina. Calling President Bush, Franklin Delano Bush, based on this seems inaccurate in timing only given that President Bush has expanded spending at a rate that would have left Republicans sputtering in rage if ...

‘Breathtaking’ Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid

Today's New York Times fronts a story entitled "'Breathtaking' Waste and Fraud in Hurricane Aid." Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion. A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., ...

Humane Society Of The United States: Under Investigation

This is not your grandmother's "Humane Society". Those of us closely involved in dog sport have been long aware that the Humane Society of the United States is nothing more than an activist animal rights movement that has "appropriated" the identity of a long established and respected animal welfare organization. It is endlessly frustrating to hear their representatives quoted by media ...

Louisiana Hiring Brownie?

A Louisiana parish is interviewing Michael "Brownie" Brown for work as a consultant to help "get things moving again," USA Today reports. The leaders of a Louisiana parish devastated by Hurricane Katrina may bring in hired help from an unlikely source — heavily criticized former FEMA director Michael Brown. Brown, who resigned two weeks after Katrina hit Aug. 29 and has ...