Hearing rumors: I've been told that famed Mother's Restaurant has been wiped out by Katrina. Totally unconfirmed, though. I'll update if I hear any more details that you can' get from regular news sites. WDSU seems to have the best coverage going.

Light rain: Here's the satellite image of Katrina, courtesy of WDSU TV, with the eye pretty much directly over New Orleans. The weather update on the right side bar says "New Orleans Ariport 80 degrees Light Rain." Perfect.

Should I cool it or should I blow: I spent the weekend at Topsail Island, just north of Wilmington, oblivious to the brewing storm in the Gulf. Last I'd heard Katrina was clubbing in Miami, a category 1 nosebleed, but nothing else.

Got back last night, around 7:00, to find my former hometown pulling up roots and heading for high ground. Freaky.

Eno asks if I would have tried to hang in there for "The Big One." It's a tough question. I have at least one friend who's there for it, keeping an eye on the company warehouse and planning to be miserable for the next few weeks. I'm pretty sure if I were still there I could have found a place to ride it out. Chance of survival very good, and lots of excitement for 36 hours or so. Pretty cool.

But the problem comes afterward. A category 3, which I partied through in 1998, leaves some power outages, a little flooding, and you're inconvenienced for a couple days. Certainly a lot of people lose property from flooding and lots of windows get broken, but if you make it through the storm, you'll be fine. This storm is going to make life miserable for anywhere from a couple weeks to a couple months, with the first week being pretty much hell, literally. This is a city that buries its dead above ground, and this much water is going to open the tombs of many of them. I don't think I'd want to be in the city till the worst of that's cleaned up, assuming there's anything to come back to.

In all likelihood I would have headed to the Covington/Mandeville area, north of Lake Pontchartrain. Still close enough to action to be scared shitless, but with a place to stay for a few days out of the toxic cleanup site.

It looks right now like the storm has weakened, barely, and is making a slight turn to the east. That's good news for the Crescent City, though it will still be very bad, especially for the folks in Biloxi and the Gulf Coast. Here's wishing them safe passage through this storm, and as swift and thorough a recovery as possible. It will be very hard, but you will make it through.

If It Keeps on Rainin', The Levee's Gonna Break: The Crescent City appears to be looking down the barrel of "the big one" that everyone has talked about. The levee system, which keeps the city dry (some of the time), will likely not withstand Katrina.

"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," Mayor Ray Nagin said in ordering the mandatory evacuation for his city of 485,000 people, surrounded by suburbs of a million more. "The storm surge will most likely topple our levee system."

Meanwhile, some tourists are stuck with nowhere to evacuate to.

Tina and Bryan Steven, a couple from Forest Lake, Minn., who came to attend a conference of emergency medical services, sat glumly on the sidewalk outside their hotel in the French Quarter . . . [Tina], wearing a Bourbon Street T-shirt with a lewd message, interjected: "I just don't want to die in this shirt."

A true Yat would rather die than be seen in the shirt in the first place, naturally. Which leads me to Flyer, who knows what its like to ride out a New Orleans hurricane. It comes down to a simple choice: Beat feet or stock beer.

So here's the question, Flyer. You're in your apartment, you've laid in a few cases of Abita and a carton of smokes, and Mayor Nagin has just announced, "Last one out take the flag, please." Stay or go? It seems to me that with some serious preparation, you could stay and observe this in relative safety. But would you want to hang around to see your home taken away?

The tastefully named Brendan Loy is all over this storm.

The Lance Mystery: I doubt we'll ever know for sure about Lance Armstrong's 1999 piss test for performance enhancers. The thing they were testing for wasn't even illegal back then, after all. But the French sure seem to have a throbbing boner for the guy, as the latest flap makes clear.

Seems to me that no non-Frog could win the Tour seven times and not have his motives, integrity, and medical record questioned. It's a matter of national pride. I mean, what else do they have, other than this silly two-wheeled race through an inconsequential country? At least the Italians, for example, realized that it's better to blow through les pays at high-speed, in a motorized conveyance -- preferably the twelve-cylinder kind. I've said it before, and it bears repeating: The Tour de France is the dumbest sporting event ever conceived. Imagine riding your bike across the French countryside, an idiot trustifarian sort of accomplishment at best, without stopping to swill some vin ordinaire, eat some cheese that smells like your biking shoes, and take a twirl with the comely lasses of the villes (suggested courting gifts: perfume, economy size, and a twin-blade Bic).

Still, the stupid American pulled it off 7 times. Was he doping? Who the hell knows, but the question is ridiculous in nearly any professional sport. Surely others were doping. Why couldn't they beat Lance? Ah, hell with it.

More here.

Mohr to the point: Jay Mohr, the sometimes funny comic from SNL and Jerry Maguire fame, comes to my rescue. Jay...I owe you beers.

Have it your way: More hysteria from the media and government about fast food and its cause-and-effect relationship with childhood obesity. This is one of Radley Balko's bete-noirs, along with his fight to defend doctors who prescribe legal medicine, yet are targeted by the DEA, et al. because that medicine just so happens to be big league pain opiates. Radley's libertarian bona fides are certainly beyond reproach and I find his postings very informative and amusing.

The article in question, decrying how close fast food restaurants are to schools in the cities (and are therefore inherently dangerous), misses the point, which Radley also notes, stating how it's not that Fast Food doesn't offer healthy alternatives to bacon-wrapped, deep-fried meat sticks with mayo dipping sauce (yummy!), but that no one, well, at least not kids, chooses them.

I'd like to join in Radley's chorus, but also keep going. First of all, one must determine whether fast food is being consumed on a daily basis as opposed to occasionally, before one can even get to the issue of whether fast food is a problem with which we must even address.

I eat at hamburger joints on occasion. Probably less than once a week - not because of any higher virtue, but b/c I work in a major city that has a lot more options, even for the workaday $5-8 lunch alternative; and fast food is something I can get anywhere. However, when I go to eat fast food, I'm going not for the friggin' salads, I can assure you that. Meaning, I target fast food as an option when I want some greasy hamburgs, overly-large fries, and a soda to wash it all down. Stated another way, to me, fast food is an escape - an escape from the daily grind of trying to choose healthy or at least, non-deadly, alternatives for daily consumption.

It's the difference between having a glass of wine or two with dinner, and going to the bar for six pints and then rounds of Jagermeister with your new best friends with whom you've just decided to pool your money together to finally make that reunion movie with the cast from "The Facts of Life" (Do you think they're available??). The point is, you know going into the place that you're about to make some unhealthy decisions. The difference between some occasional and mostly harmless fun, and an appearance on The Smoking Gun is of frequency and degree.

If the "Gubbinment" takes away all my unhealthy choices - that can only possibly affect my life (I'll make the distinction on smoking only this once because one can argue that smoking can affect people second-hand [not that it's true, but that you can argue it]), just because others can't seem to control themselves, then there is no stopping the merry-go-round of government intervention into my life.

Fast food is one of this country's most successful exports - it may not say much about our culture, but it says a hell of a lot about our ability to tap into a universal human desire - much like our exportation of sports and entertainment. Complain all you want, but people are getting that which they desire. The only way to change the outcome is to change the desire, not the supply. One look at the "War on Drugs" should tell you all you need to know about "supply-side" prohibition.

Unfortunately (or not, depending on your viewpoint), changing preferences is much harder than simply outlawing that which we desire. My guess is that if we wanted to stop or at least greatly reduce fast food consumption by those who are most at risk, a good starting point would be diminishing the poverty gap, strengthening families, and increasing knowledge about diet and activity.

On second thought, just put a 50% tax on Big Macs and hold a press conference announcing: "Mission Accomplished."

Thoughts on movies: John Cole had this post yesterday at his Balloon Juice blog about falling prices on home video technology. I mention it only because I went to a rare movie in the theater this weekend, and was disappointed as usual. Saw the new "thriller" from Wes Craven, Red Eye, an outstandingly craptacular flick with Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy. I would be glad to never see this movie, but it's perfectly suited to a rental. $4 and some popcorn, not a great waste if the movie blows. $20 plus for two to go to the theater ain't worth it anyomore unless I know I'm going to be entertained.

This year I've seen Star Wars, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, and the above mentioned Red Eye in the theater and only Star Wars was worth it. And that probably had less to do with the movie than with the release of 6 years of pent up anticipation. The girlfriend asked a good question after the movie Friday: How do these theaters stay in business? How? The place was packed? Why? Can't answer that one.

Or as The Onion put it: My little self-righteous diatribe against "Intelligent Design" was of course, spot on and everything, but a bit dry - I mean, it's hard to be so insightful and witty at the same time. Well, hard for me anyway. The Onion did all that and more just in its headline. God, those guys are good.

For "Inveterate Imperialists" Only: Some people have too much time on their hands that they can devote a goodly amount of effort to creating websites that have no real purpose (bloggers aside of course!), but at the same time, are wildly entertaining.

NK News is just such a site. Its creator has managed to cull every article posted on the official propa...I mean news site of the North Korean government since December, 1996. Certainly, the creative jargon used by the government news agency is always good for a laugh, but I'm particularly enamored by the "Random Insult Generator," to wit:

You politically illiterate renegade, we will annihilate you with a fresh revolutionary upswing!

Or:

You imperialist renegade, we will transform your country into a sea of fire!

Okay, that one was more of a threat than an insult, but you get my drift.

More amusing the co-opting of the Kim Jong lookalike marionette from "Team America: World Police," which if you haven't seen, you are missing out.

Toto, we're not in an intelligently designed political state anymore: Okay, Kansas moves one step closer to teaching intelligent design to its public school students. Is it a little surprising? Yeah, it is. But, certainly the writing was on the wall.

What confuses me more however is the impetus:

"We think this is a great development ... for the academic freedom of students," said John West, senior fellow of the Discovery Institute, which supports intelligent design theory.

Hmmm, okay, it's about "academic freedom." I suppose that isn't a bad thing. So, one presumes that Kansas will soon be teaching about crop circles being evidence of alien visitations, how tinfoil hats keep the government waves from controlling our actions, and how L Ron Hubbard may be on to something after all.

See, the push for ID in schools is not about "academic freedom." Those behind ID are about pushing an agenda, specifically designed to advance a belief-based curriculum. Whatever you may think about evolution; it is God-neutral - it neither advances, nor curbs, the proposition that everything on earth (and all around us for that matter) was created by some higher, sentient being. It just says that once the spark of life got here, however that was, the way we are now came about due to things like natural selection.

The important part of course, is that Darwin's theories are scientifically supportable. It doesn't mean that we might not find ways to scientifically alter them, or even disprove them one day. But, to teach kids that life as we know it was/is intentionally designed, by one mother-fucker of an engineer, is not only not provable, it's not even demonstrable. It's like saying "Yellow is the most beautiful color around, because I can't imagine a more beautiful one, therefore it must have been created by a divine artist." The whole theory is self-centered - in our perception of what is possible - as opposed to what is objectively demonstrated by observance and testing.

Evolution should not be viewed as the end-all, be-all, nor a threat to religious belief in general. It should just be viewed, rightly, as the best scientific explanation going. ID has no real foundation in science, it is merely an alternative - one that is not entirely crack-pot, but one that is nonetheless as provable or demonstrable as my deeply-held belief that the divine drunken otter in the sky made us by accident. Weep for Kansas...weep.

So nice I read it twice: A penetrating review of The Dukes of Hazard movie over at Libertas. Just think about it:

However, if constructivism holds, we have to choose between dialectic narrative and a ‘great ass. '

I may go back and read it a third time, just to make sure I caught all the nuance.

Apologies: Here is the link. Enjoy!

Crackdown: If they'd had this law in Dayton when I went to college I would have been screwed.

A new ordinance is being considered in Anderson to keep certain types of furniture off porches.The Anderson City Council is working on a new ordinance that would ban traditional indoor furniture from being kept outside on a porch.

We once moved a friend's entire living room out into the driveway, including tv, lamps, coffee tables etc. An extra full size fridge, not the mini fridge, was requisitioned and hooked up and we spent a solid 12 -15 hours pretending nothing unusual was going on. And once I had a recliner stolen from my porch while a friend was passed out in the couch next to it. Never forgave him for not waking up.

Of course, the behavior of drunken college kids shouldn't be the standard of behavior for polite society.

Via Radley

What's in a name: More from The Corner. I agree with John Podhoretz's thoughts here about renaming streets. He's opposed to a movement to rename 16th St. in D.C. after Reagan.

Renaming something so very familiar is an act of government high-handedness, as the New York City example of renaming 6th Avenue "Avenue of the Americas" demonstrates. It's been 60 years, and nobody calls it Avenue of the Americas, and nobody ever will (except for real estate reasons). I'm all for honoring Ronald Reagan, but not this way -- not in a way that would embarrass Reagan himself.

It's seems a little arbitrary, although maybe 16th St. has some Reaganesque symbolism I don't know about. I could still get behind Eno's idea to create a dollar coin with the Gipper's likeness. That would be more fitting.

Razor's nightmare continues: Flip flops aren't just tacky, they're a killer. Serves the tasteless bastards right, though, eh Raz.

Via The Corner.

Excuses: As Flyer noted, I'm taking two weeks off (starting Monday) to relax, after which I'll return home, do my encore performance of Julius Caesar in early September, and then be back to blogging fairly regularly. Doesn't look like the nomination of Judge Roberts will give us much to fight about, but maybe Bolton will stir up that rogues gallery on Turtle Bay and give us a good sideshow. Something's gotta happen, right?

President Rodham: I've puzzled over this a couple of times, Flyer, and I could never figure out why, aside from the Ferraro disaster in 1984, the Democrats -- the party of women and minorities, we're told -- is positively allergic to running them nationally. It's been widely noted, in addition, that Bush Jr.'s cabinet looks more like America than Clinton's cabinet that he promised would "look like America." Besides which, Clinton's big minority nod was to put Kimba Wood, er, Zoe Baird, uh, Janet Reno, or some broad (though he claimed to be looking for "the best-qualified individual") in the AG spot, but only as a beard for Webb Hubbell.

At any rate, it highlights how deep in thrall traditional "minorities" are to the Dems. They don't have to let them play, after all. What are they going to do, join the GOP?

That said, Hillary does have the personality problem, so the Kos-ian protestations may be partly honest (though I really suspect a lot of older, male, honky Dems are afraid minorities will take the party from them). Last month's Atlantic surveyed influential Democrats about the '08 election, and they generally agreed that long-term exposure to Hillary is going to turn off even some who "like" her. She might surge at first, like Howard Dean did in the '04 primaries, but then she'll start to grate on folks. Look for '08 to be another white male vs. white male contest.

The perils of a Hillary nomination: Kos comes out against a Hillary '08 campaign, because she's dull as dishwater boring and the Dmocratic base needs someone cool they can rally around. And someone that still has positions well left of the DLC moderates. I don't know if he's really afraid she'd be so boring that turnout would be down. After all, the first female presidential candidate ought to be enough reason for your base to come out in support. Maybe the real problem is fear that she's for real with some of her moderate/right positions (hawkish on Iraq, not too doctrinaire on abortion) and not just playing to the masses. Although I'm inclined to believe that he only reason she ever does anything is to gain political advantage, and I doubt Kos believes any differently, I'm skeptical about that scenario as well.

What I really found odd in his post, though, was this line.

Given a choice between personality and policy, voters have been picking personality for the LAST SEVEN ELECTIONS. But Dems are still acting as if the voters have the same attention span they had during the Lincoln-Douglas debates, or even the Kennedy-Nixon debates.

What? Americans have short attention spans? Just conservatives, Kos, or do you think any bong smoke theorists on the left, with their short term memory obliterated, have trouble staying awake through a John Kerry ten point plan to come up with a ten point plan to improve the economy? Maybe you're right, though. If we were all as informed about the issues and detailed plans as they average voter was in 1858, I'm sure everything would be great. Information widely disseminated at the speed of horse and average education levels pretty low, even by modern DOE standards. That's the ideal situation for voter awareness.

And the Kennedy-Nixon debate was pretty much the beginning of modern "popularity contest" politics. Kennedy got elected because he and his wife were pretty and his daddy was rich, the ultimate triumph of style over substance. You can claim that modern voters make some decisions for pretty stupid reasons (like what they heard in a Green Day song) but don't pretend there was some halcyon day of intellectual debate when the masses trotted out to stadiums to cheer the noble competitors thrust and parry with their daggerlike tongues (and your guy, naturally, won the day).

All he's really saying is that we keep losing even though we're so much smarter than our opponent, so it must be style. Let's find some of that '92 sax-playing mojo!

Maybe you keep losing because when the style isn't there and people actually hear you talk, they stay away in droves.

Flashback on Bolton: Mark Steyn's (long) take on John Bolton's nomination/appointment. From March, but very funny and very on point. Demorat hand wringing over Bolton isn't about his personality, temper, or impatience with subordinates. It's that when he says the UN needs reform, he's not talking about

change(ing) three-letter acronyms (INS) to four-letter acronyms (BCIS) just to show how serious we are, and a year or four down the line we may well get real tough and require five-letter acronyms.

Intelligent design: I don't think Bush is trying to push Christianity on anyone, while promoting the idea that we can expose children to more than one idea and worldview, including intelligent design. He means well

Unfortunately that's no excuse. This is just a bad idea for a federal Department of Education and it's a pretty dumb move politically. Christian conservatives can accept (I hope) that once the government starts teaching one religious idea, it pretty much has to give equal time to every other viewpoint. Unless you're in a parochial school stick to that which can be proven by scientific method and tell the little whelps to meditate if they want any answers beyond that.

Hat tip John Hawkins.