Measured in terms of Integrated Kinetic Energy at landfall, Sandy was bigger than Katrina...

... and second only in modern records to Hurricane Isabel in 2003. Sandy only had Category 1 winds — while Katrina was Category 3 — but it was very large and thus had more IKE, which relates more strongly to the size of the storm surge.

[T]he storm surge is the increased water level along the coast caused by winds continuously bulldozing the ocean onto the land. It builds long before a storm makes landfall. It simply raises the mean sea level from its normal level by a few to over 25 feet.

Sandy also hit at high tide, making the surge higher. The damage from a surge also has to do with coastal topography and bathymetry.

Hurricane Katrina was “only” a Category 3 storm at landfall, yet ended up being the most costly natural disaster in our nation’s history due its impact on a vulnerable, highly populated low lying city. Sandy had Category 1 winds at landfall yet was able to create very significant storm surge over hundreds of miles of highly populated coastline.

I found that article because I was trying to figure out what "category" Sandy was. I wasn't sure it was even Category 1, and I wondered what would happen if a Category 3 (or 4 or 5) storm hit NYC.  I also found this article in Popular Mechanics, describing a study of the consequences of a Category 4 hurricane hitting NYC. The estimate was $500 billion in damage. A study released last September said a "Category 1 hurricane or winter nor'easter could inundate the city's subway and cause $58 billion in losses"... which sounds like what happened.

Did Chris Christie "sudden love-in" with Obama hurt Mitt Romney?

"Sudden love-in" is the Washington Post's terminology.

There is no professed motivation for Christie’s newfound feelings for the president, other than that the two men are now partners in a massive effort to rebuild his state. Asked about the election on “Fox & Friends,” Christie said, “I have no idea, nor am I the least bit concerned or interested,” adding: “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me.”

I want to say Chris Christie is saying and doing the right thing, not only morally and in his own political interest, but in the interest of Mitt Romney and the GOP. Saying it's not political and acting like politics are suspended, the best approach morally, happens also to be the best approach politically.

It's good politically because it's a vivid demonstration of devotion to public service and the capacity to rise about partisanship and do the things that need to be done.

Compare the Christie's interaction with Obama to the way Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco interacted with President Bush after Hurricane Katrina. Here's how Bush described some of it in his book "Decision Points" (at page 308-309):

The initial plan had been for me to land at the New Orleans airport, pick up Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin, and survey the damage on an aerial tour. But on the Marine One flight from Mississippi, we received word that the governor, mayor, and a Louisiana congressional delegation were demanding a private meeting on Air Force One first.

The tone started out tense and got worse. The governor and mayor bickered. Everyone blasted the Federal Emergency Management Agency for failing to meet their needs. Congressman Bobby Jindal pointed out that FEMA had asked people to email their requests, despite the lack of electricity in the city. I shook my head. “We’ll fix it,” I said, looking at FEMA Director Mike Brown. Senator Mary Landrieu interrupted with unproductive emotional outbursts. “Would you please be quiet?” I had to say to her at one point.


I asked to speak to Governor Blanco privately. We walked out of the conference room, through a narrow passageway, and into the small cabin at the front tip of Air Force One. I told her it was clear the state and local response forces had been overwhelmed. “Governor,” I pressed, “you need to authorize the federal government to take charge of the response.”

She told me she needed twenty-four hours to think it over.

“We don’t have twenty-four hours,” I snapped. “We’ve waited too long already.”

The governor refused to give an answer.

Next I asked to meet privately with Mayor Nagin. He had spent four days since Katrina holed up in a downtown hotel. He hadn’t bathed or eaten a hot meal until he used my shower and ate breakfast on Air Force One. In a radio interview the previous evening, he had vented his frustrations with the federal government. “Get off your asses and do something,” he said, “and let’s fix the biggest goddamn crisis in the history of this country.” Then he broke down in tears. When I met him on the plane, Ray whispered an apology for his outburst and explained that he was exhausted.

I asked the mayor what he thought about federalizing the response. He supported it. “Nobody’s in charge,” he said. “We need a clear chain of command.” But only the governor could request that the federal government assume control of the emergency.

Maybe it makes you Mitt Romney supporters nervous to see Chris Christie working smoothly with President Obama. You need to visualize the alternative. Governor Christie is doing exactly the right thing.

Mitt Romney likes to portray himself as a Republican who can work "across the aisle," and Chris Christie is modeling that very behavior. Message: That's what Republicans do. That's a good message, speaking to the very moderates who might drift over to Obama if the Republicans created friction and rancor in the wake of the hurricane.

What standard of living should others feel moved to lift you up to? Question 1: What's your "social context"?

We saw in that NYT article about the "FUCK! I'm in my twenties" girl Emma Koenig that her mother had to do some analysis before deciding to help pay for her $1,200-a-month East Village apartment. The key line was: "It made me see that Emma’s social context was such that our helping with her rent was legitimate..."

It made me think about the refugees of Hurricane Katrina, housed in the Houston Astrodome, about whom presidential wife and mother Barbara Bush famously said:

"And so many of the people in the arenas here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

What's your social context? Is that the right question?

"In other cities, charter schools exist in spite of the system. Here they are the system."

Says John White, the superintendent of New Orleans public schools.

The results are encouraging. Five years ago, 23% of children scored at or above "basic" on state tests; now 48% do. Before Katrina, 62% attended failing schools; less than a fifth do today. The gap between city kids and the rest of the state is narrowing....

By 2013, New Orleans plans to have the country's first "all charter" school system. 

"If I invoked the Insurrection Act against her wishes, the world would see a male Republican president usurping the authority of a female Democratic governor by declaring an insurrection in a largely African American city."

"That left me in a tough position. That would arouse controversy anywhere. To do so in the Deep South, where there had been centuries of states' rights tensions, could unleash holy hell."

I was struck by that passage in Bush's memoir, "Decision Points." Bush, of course, ended up getting criticized for seemingly not "car[ing] about black people," so it's interesting to think that his delays — at least as he presents them now — had to do with the history of the South. But look closely as the 2 concerns that slowed Bush's imposition of federal authority in New Orleans:

1. Gender. Bush didn't like the image of the male pushing the female aside. He thought he'd be criticized for that.

2. "States' rights tensions." That's a strange way to evoke the history of racism in the south if you want to convey that you cared about the suffering of black people. "States' rights" was the cry of those who resisted federal efforts to advance integration. Bush was, in fact, being deferential to the Southern governor.

Bush, sensitive to potential criticism about sexism and states' rights, exercised restraint, which exposed him to criticism about race.

There was rapper Kanye West who told TV viewers: "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Jesse Jackson compared the plight of some survivors with being trapped in the "hull of a slave ship".

"Five years later, I can barely write these words without feeling disgusted. I am deeply insulted by the suggestion that we allowed American citizens to suffer because they were black... The more I thought about it, the angrier I felt. I was raised to believe that racism was one of the greatest evils in society," Bush writes. "I faced a lot of criticism as president. I didn't like hearing people claim I had lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or cut taxes to benefit the rich. But the suggestion that I was a racist, because of the response to Katrina, represented an all-time low. I told Laura at the time that it was the worst moment of my presidency. I feel the same way today."

He feels bad about this criticism and is contemptuous of those who expressed it, but: 1. His own words indicate that he put racism third on a list of 3 things he was worried he'd be criticized for, and 2. Jackson and West were speaking emotionally at the time when the suffering was going on.

Meanwhile, Kanye West cracked under pussycat questioning from Matt Lauer.

Why are there so many serious novels about 9/11 and so few about Katrina? — asks Chloe Schama who thinks it's just shameful.

She says:

In the aftermath of the attacks on the Word Trade Center, many of the most famous authors of our time have weighed in on the attacks, depicting the ways large and small in which they altered people’s lives. Some hypothesized possible motivations behind the terrorists’ actions: John Updike in Terrorist (2006) and Martin Amis in the short story “The Last Days of Muhammad Atta” (2006). Others used the events as narrative bookends: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007) and Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children (2006) are two examples. Some novels commented more indirectly: At the start of Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2005), the protagonist sees a plane flying low and fears a terrorist attack, while, in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), the main character’s quest to unravel a personal mystery is motivated by his father’s death in the World Trade Center.

Meanwhile, the literary response to Hurricane Katrina, the other great American disaster of the last decade, has been almost nonexistent. In the five years since Katrina, almost no major literary figure has similarly illustrated the effects of the hurricane.

Oh, good lord, this is so stupid I hate to have to point it out. Katrina was a hurricane. We don't have to try to figure out its motivations and come to terms with its evil. Yes, there were human failings in the aftermath of the storm, but novelists have been chewing through the routine failings of humankind since the novel was invented. They don't even need a real event that had real people screwing up to get them started. They'll make up stories and characters to show the way people do bad things. You know, fiction.

But the lack of a strong literary response to the hurricane appears to have consequences.... For centuries, novels have done the important job of making devastation more concrete for people by examining individual experience, real or fictional, with that devastation.

Ugh. Art subordinated to politics and social change. Great novelists should write about Katrina to help people. No. That's not how it works.

Novelists have done a commendable job exposing us to the dust and the rubble of September 11. It’s time for more of them to churn the mud, water, blood, and decay wrought by Katrina.

As if serious novelists take their marching orders from the political hacks of this world.

AFTERTHOUGHT: "It’s time for more of them to churn the mud, water, blood, and decay wrought by Katrina." Put mud, water, blood, and decay in in the blender and press "churn." Yummy Katrina art smoothie. 

Drudge is giving Obama a hard time this morning.

There's this at the top:



Drudge dogged him back in the spring of '08 for looking dorky on a bicycle. You'd think his people would at least get him a non-unisex bike that's the right size for him. Anyway, here's Drudge juxtaposing him to Putin holding a giant weapon. But it's not as though you can't look cool with a bike. Be like this:



(Miss him yet?)

Right under the Obama-on-a-bike/Putin-with-a-gun juxtaposition today, Drudge has this picture:



(Saving the image, I called this "dumbrella." Imagine if Bush had made an error of that kind?)

Drudge uses that picture to link to an AP story about Obama's commitment to Katrina victims: "Five years after Hurricane Katrina's wrath, President Barack Obama sought to reassure disaster-weary Gulf Coast residents Sunday that he would not abandon their cause." The AP story has Obama "[s]tanding in front of a large American flag with students arrayed behind him," so why does Drudge show Obama and his elegantly dressed wife entering (or leaving) a fancily gated establishment and mishandling an umbrella? That picture says so much: Obama is distracted by the trivial problems of taking his wife out somewhere expensive while the poor people of the Gulf are waiting and waiting for help. The disapproving glance of his wife gets more attention than the appeals of the hurricane victims. He's fortunate enough to have the kind of weather problem that can be solved by a simple umbrella, which wouldn't be any help at all in a hurricane. And yet his handling of an umbrella in a drizzle is incompetent, so how could he deal with a hurricane? The picture says: How can Obama understand/care/do anything about Katrina?

ADDED: There's also this way for a (future) President to look good with a bike.

"White House in P.R. 'panic' over spill."

Says Politico.

They can't pontificate about Bush and Katrina anymore. Wouldn't it be amazing if Obama were to empathize with Bush's predicament? That would change the tenor of political discourse in Washington.

"Unless and until Barack Obama addresses the full depth of Americans’ anger with his full arsenal of policy smarts and political gifts..."

"... his presidency and, worse, our economy will be paralyzed."

Frank Rich says Obama's "Katrina moment" is here.

"Let's call John Kerry's loss in 2004 what it is: the luckiest thing to happen to Democrats in 40 years."

Writes David W. Rohde in TNR:

[Kerry] would have faced a Republican Congress substantially weighted against him and hell-bent on disrupting his legislative agenda....

[T]he Bush administration survived, and the public grew increasingly disenchanted with its performance and the Republican brand....

It is difficult to predict precisely how events would have unfolded. For example, opinions of Bush suffered greatly from his handling of Hurricane Katrina; perhaps Kerry's approach would have been a big boost. Also, the situation in Iraq might have been very different, and that could have affected election results and governance....

The situation in Iraq? You mean the war John Kerry was hell-bent on losing for us? Can we have a little detail on that point? Rodhe is so hot to promote the Democratic Party that he paradoxically must abandon his best argument that Kerry's loss was a lucky thing for the party: most likely, Kerry would have lost the war, and the "situation" in Iraq in 2008 would have been chaotic and ugly, leading American voters to lurch toward the Republicans.

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade said:

Heheheh...she said lurch.

Ha ha:

Live-blogging the Democratic debate.

1. Just waiting for this thing to kick off. I'll add to this post, numbering the paragraphs as I go.

2. Intro, from some YouTube clip. Richardson looks terrified. Clinton, resolute. But now, it's Anderson Cooper, in the flesh. Couldn't someone have Tubed him? Biden glistens. Cooper blabs about how the questions were "heartfelt" so they had trouble choosing. Now, he's showing some cute clips that aren't chosen. Cooper cruelly slams some 5-year-old girl for being a puppet of her parents. And he hilariously slams the Biden campaign for its trick getting a lot of YouTubers to ask the same question.

3. Question 1: Politicians always make promises, but then they don't do anything. How will you be different? A good meta question. Unfortunately, we're getting an answer from Dodd. He got the job done in the Senate. Fine, but who cares about Dodd? Ah, now Obama. We need to "change how business is done in Washington." He brings "perspective" -- the perspective that we need to change.

4. Question 2, for Kucinich. How would we be better off with him? Why'd CNN pick this question? I think we know. They're packaging up li'l Dennis to set him aside for the rest of the night.

5. Kucinich is wearing a checked shirt. The hell? What male wears a checked shirt?! Hillary was "involved in the question," so Cooper throws it over to her. Wow! She's wearing an orange jacket textured with curving, scalloped lines. It reminds me of a chair we had in the 1950s, but it actually looks rather pretty and definitely sets her apart from the guys who absolutely are not free to wear orange suits. She speaks in a solid, stern voice that has nothing to do with wavy orange patterns. She speaks in a straight, navy blue line. Obama gets included here too, and he's elegant in a gray suit and a blue tie. His gestures look flowing as I scroll through them in slo-mo, looking for the perfect frame to post here. Just wait a few minutes.



6. Hillary is asked to define "liberal" and to say if she is one. She doesn't like what other people have done to the good old word, so she prefers "progressive." The problem with "liberal" is that people think it means government will do everything for you, but "progressive" seems to be about giving people "tools" to better themselves. Cooper throws it to Gravel. Is he a liberal? He lights into Obama for taking money from lobbyists.

7. The next question gets applause: What if they had to pick a Republican running mate? Who would it be? Biden fails to answer the question. He just lists his accomplishments. Edwards says Chuck Hagel, then brushes the question aside and runs through his issues. No one else gets the question! Blah! Cool question. Crap nonanswers. [ADDED, reading the transcript: Biden did blurt out "Chuck Hagel" before going on about his accomplishments. The Edwards just copied him.]

8. Should African-Americans get reparations for slavery? Edwards: no (but blah, blah, blah other stuff about African-Americans). Obama cleverly says the reparations should be "investment in our schools." Cooper asks the whole group. Kucinich comes forward, and his answer begins "The Bible says...." Yeesh! Imagine if a Republican started an answer that way.

9. Richardson's first chance to speak is about Hurricane Katrina. Unfortunately, he seems robotic and looks awful -- afraid to spend money on makeup? -- and I feel like I'm watching the man -- whom I respect -- slip into oblivion.

10. "Not my question!" Cooper proclaims as he repeats a question from a black man to Obama: What about the way they're saying you're not "authentically black"? Obama refers to trying to catch a cab, that is, he reminds us he's been subjected to bias because of the way he looks to people who don't know anything about his ancestry and upbringing. He then segues to talking about how he's concerned about race issues. Clinton is then asked about being a woman. "I may be able to break that hardest of glass ceilings." For some reason, this line touches me, and I've been steely toward Clinton as she's played the sex card in the past. She's running not as a woman, she says (now!), but because she thinks she's the "best person." But she ends saying her taking office would send a nice message to "a lot of little girls and boys around the world."

11. Cooper asks Edwards about the way his wife says he's better for women than Hillary is. He talks about poverty, wages, and health care.

12. Two lesbians ask if they should be allowed to marry. Kucinich, of course, says yes. Dodd blathers about how one ought to treat people who happen to have a different sexual orientation but then says "civil unions" and denies marriage. Richardson would do "what is achievable" -- and that is civil unions. He volunteers that he'd reject "Don't ask, don't tell."

13. A reverend asks about the way religion is used to deny rights to gay persons. Edwards goes first and says he feels "enormous conflict" about the issue and he's been on a "journey" about it. His wife supports gay marriage though. I'm really skeptical about this notion that a candidate's spouse can represent positions for him, so that he gets to seem somehow sympathetic to it when he's not for it. What if President Bush tried to appease people who don't like the war in Iraq by telling us that Laura was actually opposed to it? We'd just laugh at him! The reverend turns out to be in the audience, and Cooper asks him how he liked the answer. Edwards now admits that it's wrong to use religion as the basis for denying gay people their rights.

14. What are they thinking?



Clinton: I've got the nomination in my clutches.

Obama: I'm in this!

Richardson: I'm doomed. Either that or he's catching up on his reading and doesn't know he's doomed.

15. How do we pull out of Iraq now? Even if you opposed the war to start. It's like leaving a newborn baby to take care of itself. Obama says we should "be careful" getting out but also that we need to make it clear that "there is no military solution."

16. A mother of a soldier asks why the Congress hasn't stopped the war yet. Are the Democrats holding back for fear of getting blamed for losing the war? This question gets applause. Clinton goes first. No real answer. Kucinich lights on fire: All we need to do is cut off the funds. We can do it! Then Dodd flares up. Iraq is keeping us from saving Darfur. Sure. Richardson says he's different. Bring all the troops home by the end of the year. The war is a "quagmire." "It's endless." "Get it done."

17. Gravel yells that all the soldiers who died in Vietnam died in vain, because "you can now go to Hanoi and get a Baskin-Robbins ice cream cone." And now, in Iraq, they are all dying in vain! Cooper throws it to Obama: Have all the soldiers in Iraq died in vain? Obama switches to the issue of going into Iraq. Cooper refocuses him, and he says no. Soldiers never die in vain (somehow). Edwards gets the question, and he too realizes he's got to deny that the soldiers die in vain.

18. Should women have to register for the military at age 18 the way men do? Yes: Dodd, Clinton, Edwards, Gravel.

19. Nice question for Clinton: How will you be effective with the Arab states when they are so biased against women? Oh, they'll take her seriously, she tells us. In fact, just having a woman President will be an effective statement. I like that. And I'd kind of like to see that.

20. They go to extreme closeup for Edwards for some reason:



21. Would you meet -- "without precondition" -- with the leaders of Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Cuba, North Korea? Obama: "I would!" Hillary: "I will not promise..." You don't make promises like that without knowing more about how it will be used. She's got the more responsible answer, clearly. Edwards: "Yes," but Clinton is right. A little fence-straddling. And this is the precise point in the debate where I conclude -- I'd been toying with the conclusion -- that Clinton is the superior candidate.

22. "How many family members do you have serving in uniform?" asks a man with many military deaths in his family. The answers devolve into more talk about the plan to withdraw troops.

23. "Who was your favorite teacher and why?" Gravel claims some brother recognized his "dyslexia." Come on! Who talked about "dyslexia" back when Gravel was a kid? Obama had a teacher who made him feel special for having lived outside of the country. Biden talks about a priest who taught him something about the greatest sin... and his microphone malfunctions, so we don't really hear it. Edwards had a teacher who taught him that a guy could have a daddy who worked in a mill and .... blah blah blah... teacher wants li'l Johnny to be President.

24. A question about No Child Left Behind is written on a series of placards, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"-style. Richardson would scrap it -- and give teachers a $40,000 a year minimum wage, emphasize math and science, and have a "major federal program" for "music, dancing, sculpture, and the arts." Finally! A President who cares about sculpture. Biden: No Child Left Behind -- which he voted for -- was "a mistake." "Ya need better teachers." No kidding!

25. Would you send your kids to private school? Edwards: His kids all went to public school. Hillary: Chelsea went to public school "until we moved to Washington." "The press would never leave her alone." Obama: His kids went to a private school because it was near their house. Most in-your-face answer of the night, from Biden: "My kids did go to private school. It's because right after I got elected my wife and daughter were killed. I had two sons who survived." His sister helped him with those sons and sent them to Catholic school. He looks a little pissed off at having to talk about this. The poor man. Did you remember his terrible tragedy? Kucinich: Public school! Gravel: Both. Competition is good! Dodd: Veers off topic and lectures us about whatever. [ADDED, on reading the transcript: Biden's sister brought the sons to the Friends school, and later, he sent them to Catholic school.]

26. Sex education. Obama gets a chance to respond to Romney, who recently criticized him for saying he supported age-appropriate education for young schoolkids. He gives the right answer: Kids need to know if someone is "encroaching on their privacy."

27. They get really YouTubish with two Tennessee guys who ask whether all the press about Al Gore running hurts y'all's feelins. This gives all the candidates a chance to display their best, big, toothy smiles. No actual answers, just another video, a snowman talking -- in the style of Mr. Bill -- about Gore's big issue, global warming. Then, there's a cute video about energy conservation. Gravel says tax people on what they spend, not what they earn. Dodd wants to take us down to a 55 mile an hour speed limit, Jimmy Carter-style.

28. Nuclear power. Edwards: No. He's for "bio" fuel. He's against liquefied coal, because it's a "carbon-based" fuel. Like his "bio" fuel isn't. Obama: We should "explore nuclear power." Clinton: She's "agnostic" about nuclear power. "It can be a win-win if we do it right."

29. Would you work -- as President -- for the minimum wage? Edwards and Clinton -- totally rich -- both say sure. Obama is nicely set up to point out they're rich... even though "We don't have Mitt Romney money."

30. Why not make everyone pay Social Security taxes on all of their income? Dodd says yes. Obama won't answer. No one else speaks.

31. Damned Baby Boomers... raise taxes or cut benefits? Richardson talks about diabetes. No one else speaks.

32. A Virginia guy strums a guitar and sings about taxes. He doesn't like them. Only Biden answers, and he deserves credit for admitting that the government needs your money, but then he does the standard Democratic thing of saying he'd just take away the tax benefits the rich folks have.

33. Another question about Democrats and taxes. Only Kucinich answers.

34. Cooper prepares us for a barrage of questions about health care. Edwards shows his trial lawyer stuff wringing sympathy out of us with the story of a man who couldn't speak because he couldn't afford surgery that would restore his speech. Hillary wants "decency and respect" for everyone.

35. God and guns. One guy shows a quarter and recites the motto "In God We Trust." Biden's okay with it. Another guy says he doesn't believe in God and worries about Democrats pandering to religion the way the Republicans do. Blah blah blah... what do you expect them to say?

36. The end. The end of my TiVo anyway. I did get a little "off-live" tonight. It's hard to resist the power of the remote controller. If it persisted beyond 2 hours, I missed it. I guess there was something about guns. Anyway, that's it for me. So, okay, what do I think of the YouTube experiment and the way CNN filtered the raw questioning? I think they did pretty well. And, frankly, all the candidates did reasonably well. But, it's clear too that the top 3 that we knew coming in were the top 3 really are the top 3. I think John Edwards did a nice job of pulling himself up even with Barack Obama. And, likewise, Hillary Clinton let us know she's #1. Bill Richardson failed to distinguish himself from the rest of the pack. And so, we have a top 3, with a clear frontrunner. Now, can we see a debate with those 3? Please, before it's rammed down our throats that Hillary is inevitable? I'm not against Hillary. I found her appealing tonight. But I would like to see her tested against Edwards and Obama, without the pointless excess of Gravel and Kucinich... and... Dodd... and, sorry... Biden and Richardson.

37. Writing the next morning, with the transcript, I can see the last part, about guns. Biden calls the guy in the video crazy: "I don't know that he is mentally qualified to own that gun. I'm being serious.... Look, we should be working with law enforcement, right now, to make sure that we protect people against people who don't -- are not capable of knowing what to do with a gun because they're either mentally imbalanced and/or because they have a criminal record, and I hope he doesn't come looking for me." I didn't see the video, so maybe the guy did look crazy -- he was holding his gun and calling it his "baby" -- but Biden seems awfully interested in taking away guns.

38. Finally, they are asked to look at the person to their left and say one thing they don't like about them. Most of them won't say anything bad, but Edwards snarks about Hillary's jacket: "I'm not sure about that coat." Which might seem cute, but might piss women off. Hillary comes back with: "Yes, John, it's a good thing we're ending soon." Which sounds like a wife telling her husband he's had too much to drink. But she's supposed to talk about Obama, so she says: "I admire and like very much Barack." I find it hard to believe a sentence that sounds like it was translated from a foreign language. But then, why should she like very much Barack? She'd like very much less Barack. Then Obama one-ups Edwards with "I actually like Hillary's jacket. I don't know what's wrong with it." Which could be read as a double insult. First, it puts down Edwards for knocking the lady's clothes. And second, it subtly implies that Edwards is feminine: Obama can't tell what is wrong with the jacket, because he's a man and doesn't know about fashion, not like some other men, who aren't manly enough.

39. Cooper ends with a pitch for YouTube and the Republican debates. So they're using this format again. Now that people have seen the videos -- and which videos CNN chooses -- it should have an effect on the quality of the next set of videos. What are the lessons? You can do humor and you can speak through animation or puppetry as long as you ask a dead serious question, like that snowman did. It helps to personify the question, like those lesbians or the man with dead soldiers in his his family. And it seems to work to sound a little inept or too casual in the first second and a half, but then quickly get out a clear question. They also obviously want questions in the same basic areas they'd hit if they were writing their own questions, so you might choose something boring -- like Social Security -- that not too many other people will do but that CNN will think has to get in. Good luck.

Did Mitt Romney torture his dog?

This cruelty to animals story has legs... and a tail... and loose bowels.... This is the clearest example ever of smearing a candidate with shit. You know the story. Romney transported his dog in some sort of container that was affixed to the top of his station wagon, and the dog got diarrhea that the family became aware of when one of the kids saw it dribbling down the window.

“If you wouldn’t strap your child to the roof of your car, you have no business doing that to the family dog! I don’t know who would find that acceptable,” [said PETA President Ingrid Newkirk]....

While PETA doesn’t take a position on any candidate, Ingrid offered up the theory that Mitt may have “what neurologists call an ‘absence of the mirror neuron,’ a physiological condition in the brain which means they cannot feel basic compassion.”

Isn't it quite standard to plant the idea that Republicans lack feeling? I was just reading this review of a biography of Condoleezza Rice ("Twice as Good: Condoleezza Rice and Her Path to Power," by Marcus Mabry). The reviewer, Jonathan Freedland, tells us the reader feels "oddly estranged" from Rice, not through any fault of the author's, but because of the "chilly steel he finds" in her heart:

His search for vulnerabilities or doubt reveals only a cold, unwavering self-discipline. One of the book’s most telling moments comes when the 17-year-old Rice realizes, after surrendering her childhood to the goal of becoming a concert pianist, that she is not, after all, good enough. Her teacher ruled that while “technically competent ... she was too detached emotionally to be a great pianist.” She needed “disciplined abandon”: she had the discipline all right, she just couldn’t let herself go. Yet even this major blow barely troubles her. She simply decides to pursue another goal....

The former arms inspector David Kay calls her the worst national security adviser since the office was created, and the verdict seems harsh but not wholly unwarranted.

Rice’s defense would rest on her extraordinary presentational skills, her fluency and poise under inquisitorial fire. So what if she is more a synthesizer of others’ ideas than an original thinker, runs this logic; she has a sure political touch. Except even that is in doubt. Caught shopping for shoes in New York as the corpses floated in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Rice explained that “I didn’t think about my role as a visible African-American national figure. I just didn’t think about it.” Given what we know of her upbringing, that isn’t psychologically surprising — but it showed a political tin ear.

So heartless and cold, these Republicans... who will, of course, take every opportunity to say that Democrats are so mushily sentimental they can't even think.

UPDATE: From Ann Romney's blog:

Surprise, surprise, the media didn't get the dog story right. Our dog Seamus rode in an ENCLOSED kennel, not in the open air. And he loved it. Every time he saw it, he jumped up on the tailgate, walked in, and lay down. It was just like the kennel he curled up in at home.

The dog wasn't in an exposed cage.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Is this wrong?

Finishing the debate in transcript form, I give the win to Richardson.

I think I got about two thirds of the way through the debate last night. Here's what I managed to write. I was just about to watch the end of the debate this morning to finish up, but I found this handy transcript. I like a nice transcript. It's quicker to read than to watch, you don't have to type out the quotes, and evading the question is so obvious that what's irritating seen on TV becomes almost amusing.

Let me start reading where I left off last night and pick out what interests me.

Obama is asked "what are America's three most important allies around the world?" He throws in so much extra material that he gets around to naming two: the European Union and Japan. A follow-up question is asked: "I didn't hear you mention Israel, and I ask because there is a quote attributed to your name. You said recently, 'No one is suffering more than the Palestinian people.' Do you stand by that remark?" Answer:

Well, keep in mind what the remark actually, if you had the whole thing, said.

What the remark said. There's that remark, talking away, and I'm over here, so I guess you can say I'm standing by it. Standing by, watching with amazement, wondering what that darned remark will come out with next.

But in his next sentence, he takes ownership of the remark:

And what I said is nobody has suffered more than the Palestinian people from the failure of the Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel, to renounce violence, and to get serious about negotiating peace and security for the region.

And:

Israel has been one of our most important allies around the world. It's the only established democracy in the Middle East. It's the linchpin of much of our efforts in the Middle East.

Has been? So it "has been" an important ally, but it "is" a "linchpin" of our "efforts."

Hillary Clinton is asked about Giuliani's statement that "the Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us," and "America will be safer with a Republican president." She responds with what looks like her favorite debate move: say the current President is a failure.

We haven't secured our borders, our ports, our mass transit systems. You can go across this country and see so much that has not been done. The resources haven't gotten to the front lines where decisions are made in local government the way that they need to. And I think that this administration has consistently tried to hype the fear without delivering on the promise of making America safer. And its foreign policy around the world, as you've heard from all of my colleagues here, has also made the world less stable, which, of course, has a ripple effect with respect to what we're going to face in the future. So I hope that we can put that myth to rest. It is certainly something I will try to do during the campaign.

There is absolutely nothing there about why she would do a better job as the next President, and we were just reminded of Giuliani. Who do you want to trust, Clinton or Giuliani? That's the question. She gives not one shred of a reason here to go with her. Is there some way she would secure our borders and ports better than he would? Picture her standing at a debate next to Giuliani a year and a half from now. That's what you ought to do if you're trying to pick the best Democratic candidate. Is she the one you Democrats want standing there?

There's a "show of hands" question: "Do you believe there is such a thing as a global war on terror?" Kucinich doesn't raise his. I don't bother to read his explanation.

Let's read something important. Obama is asked "how would you change the U.S. military stance overseas" if there were another attack on two American cities and we knew "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that al Qaida did it:

Well, the first thing we'd have to do is make sure that we've got an effective emergency response, something that this administration failed to do when we had a hurricane in New Orleans.

The first thing he thinks of is Katrina. Bush failed there, don't you know. Think fast, Senator. It's another 9/11! What is the military response? Show us you can think like a Commander in Chief:

And I think that we have to review how we operate in the event of not only a natural disaster, but also a terrorist attack.

The second thing is to make sure that we've got good intelligence, a., to find out that we don't have other threats and attacks potentially out there, and b., to find out, do we have any intelligence on who might have carried it out so that we can take potentially some action to dismantle that network.

But what we can't do is then alienate the world community based on faulty intelligence, based on bluster and bombast. Instead, the next thing we would have to do, in addition to talking to the American people, is making sure that we are talking to the international community.

Because as already been stated, we're not going to defeat terrorists on our own. We've got to strengthen our intelligence relationships with them, and they've got to feel a stake in our security by recognizing that we have mutual security interests at stake.

So the military response is: think and talk.

Edwards is supremely fortunate to get a shot right now at the same question:

Well, the first thing I would do is be certain I knew who was responsible, and I would act swiftly and strongly to hold them responsible for that.

The second thing I would do -- and, of course, some of these have been mentioned already -- is find out how did this happen without our intelligence operations finding out that it was in a planning stage; how did they get through what we all recognize is a fairly porous homeland security system that we have in this country that has not been built the way it needed to be built?

You know, did the weapons that created these two simultaneous strikes come through our ports? Were they in one of the containers that have not been checked? How did these weapons get here, and how do we stop it from happening again?

I believe -- and this goes to the question you asked earlier, just a few minutes ago -- global war on terror. I think there are dangerous people and dangerous leaders in the world that America must deal with and deal with strongly.

But we have more tools available to us than bombs.

And America needs to use the tools that are available to them, so that these people who are sitting on the fence, the terrorists are trying to recruit the next generation get pushed to our side, not to the other side. We've had no long-term strategy. We need one and I will provide one as president.

So, be strong. But mainly just try very hard to figure out how they did it and how we can defend against the next attack. His idea seems to be about winning the hearts of the next generation. How do you fight the terrorists? Why not make them love us so they won't want to be terrorists anymore? Surely, if they see the Democrats have brought their new tools into the White House, they'll feel the love.

Now, Clinton gets her shot. Come on, Hillary, show you can do it! Your two biggest opponents have set this up perfectly.

Well, again, having been a senator during 9/11, I understand very well the extraordinary horror of that kind of an attack and the impact that it has, far beyond those that are directly affected.

Boring. Non-responsive.

I think a president must move as swiftly as is prudent to retaliate.

Yes! Retaliate!

If we are attacked, and we can determine who is behind that attack, and if there are nations that supported or gave material aid to those who attacked us, I believe we should quickly respond.

Now, that doesn't mean we go looking for other fights. You know, I supported President Bush when he went after Al Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

And then when he decided to divert attention to Iraq, it was not a decision that I would have made, had I been president, because we still haven't found bin Laden. So let's focus on those who have attacked us and do everything we can to destroy them.

Attack! Destroy! Thank God, one of them is willing to say it. Hillary wins.

No one else is given a turn at this, the key question of the night. But the next time Richardson is called on -- with the special Hispanic question "How do you feel about normalizing relations with Castro's Cuba?" -- he insists on going back to the "two cities" question. Good for him! And he must have been pissed to have been excluded from the A group.

I would respond militarily, aggressively. I'll build international support for our goals. I'd improve our intelligence, but that would be a direct threat on the United States, and I would make it clear that that would be an important, decisive, military response, surgical strike, whatever it takes.

That beats Hillary. Richardson is my favorite of the Democrats. And Obama and Edwards are unacceptable.

But wait.

Taking a cue from Richardson, when Obama is asked a question about lightbulbs -- yeah, really, what kind of lightbulbs! -- he goes back to the terrorism question. Now, that he's heard the others answer, he knows he's screwed it up.

But one thing that I do have to go back on, on this issue of terrorism: We have genuine enemies out there that have to be hunted down, networks have to be dismantled.

There is no contradiction between us intelligently using our military and, in some cases, lethal force to take out terrorists and, at the same time, building the sort of alliances and trust around the world that has been so lacking over the last six years.

And that, I think, is going to be one of the most important issues that the next president is going to have to do, is to repair the kinds of challenges that we face.

Am I going to let him off the hook for this? "In some cases, lethal force"?

Kucinich is spurred to challenge Obama.

My good friend, Senator Obama, that's a very provocative statement. You previously said that all options are on the table with respect to Iran. And I think that it's important for people to reflect on the real meaning of that, that you're setting the stage for another war.

Oh, no. Kucinich is pushing him back into the peace corner.

I think it's important that we move away from global warming and global warring. And the connection is oil. We're in Iraq for oil. We're looking at attacking Iran for oil.

Oh, no.

And until we change our international policies, which quit using war as an instrument of policy ... and change our energy policies ... we will continue to repeat this sorry cycle.

Obama responds (with Kuchinich interrupting him throughout):

I think it would be a profound mistake for us to initiate a war with Iran. But, have no doubt, Iran possessing nuclear weapons will be a major threat to us and to the region.... And I don't think that's disputed by any expert. They are the largest state sponsor of terrorism... Hezbollah and Hamas.... There is no contradiction between us taking seriously the need, as you do, to want to strengthen our alliances around the world -- but I think it is important for us to also recognize that if we have nuclear proliferators around the world that potentially can place a nuclear weapon into the hands of terrorists, that is a profound security threat for America and one that we have to take seriously.

Gravel goes wild here and says, among other things: "Who the hell are we going to nuke? Tell me, Barack. Barack, who do you want to nuke?"

Obama's all: "I'm not planning to nuke anybody right now, Mike, I promise."

Well, now I do want to watch the video. It seems as though Obama comes to life at the end, that he does best when he's reacting to the other candidates, rather than answering the question cold. This is a good sign that he may be an engaging candidate. I'll say more when I've seen the video.

From the transcript, I like Richardson best. Hillary didn't do anything wrong. Obama worries me. Edwards did not impress me. The others... I don't have to have an opinion on them. But what a nut that Gravel is.

UPDATE: Mere Rhetoric notes a discrepancy in some transcripts and questions whether Obama said "Israel has been one of our most important allies" as I have it quoted or "Israel is one of our most important allies" as the quote appears elsewhere. Since I have the debate TiVo'd, I checked. My quote is correct. I am certain.

Edwards.

He said he would say he was running that then he did. Do I need to post about stuff like this? A news thing happened. Ah, what the hell.

Though Mr. Edwards’s central theme in the 2004 campaign was poverty, that was not the case on Thursday, as he made only a passing reference to the “two Americas,” his slogan two years ago. Instead of choosing to announce from the Lower Ninth Ward, the impoverished neighborhood that has become a symbol for the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, opted for middle-class East New Orleans, and an area of solid, single-story tan-brick homes that are salvageable, unlike the flimsy frame buildings in the Lower Ninth Ward....

He said the next president would “need to re-establish America’s leadership role in the world,” called for quick withdrawal of 40,000 to 50,000 troops from Iraq, and said it “would be a mistake for America to escalate its role in Iraq.”

Roundly denouncing the administration’s approach, he said, “You can’t lead through raw power.”

He expressed regret for his Senate vote to authorize force in Iraq. “My vote was a mistake,” he said. “I should never have voted for the war.”

Why am I so bored with the idea of Edwards running for President? I voted for him in the primary in 2004. Why did I do that? Because I thought he was the remaining candidate with the best shot at winning. I thought he was smart, charming, and articulate enough to make people want to vote for him. As opposed to what we were about to get. And got.

ADDED: Ooh, I'm so bored with Edwards that I forgot to write the ending of the post saying why I'm so bored! I just don't like a guy who serves one term in the Senate and then reveals to the whole world -- by not running for reelection -- that he doesn't want to bother with any other public service than the one biggest plum job on the face of the planet.

The shift in Bush's Iraq rhetoric.

According to the WaPo:

President Bush shifted his rhetoric on Iraq in recent weeks after an intense debate among advisers about how to pull out of his political free fall, with senior adviser Karl Rove urging a campaign-style attack on critics while younger aides pushed for more candor about setbacks in the war, according to Republican strategists...

Although Rove raised concerns about giving critics too much ground, the younger-generation aides prevailed. Bush agreed to try the approach so long as he did not come off sounding too negative. Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University specialist on wartime public opinion who now works at the White House, helped draft a 35-page public plan for victory in Iraq, a paper principally designed to prove that Bush had one....

Writing off 30 percent or more of the public as adamantly against the war, his advisers focused on winning back a similar-size group that had soured on Iraq but, they believed, wanted to be convinced victory was possible....

The humility theme was woven into speeches, often in the first two minutes to keep viewers from turning away. Aides had noticed that anger at Bush after Hurricane Katrina subsided somewhat after he took responsibility for the response. The idea, one senior official said, was like fighting with a spouse: "You need to give voice to their concern. That doesn't necessarily solve the division and the difference, but it drains the disagreement of some of its animosity if you feel you've been heard."

I guess spouse-fighting chez Rove is an ugly affair. Nice of the younger-generation aides to think the we could actually appreciate something other than pure pep talk.

I wonder if there's some implicit advice in this for the President's opponents: The straight dyspep talk is offputting. Defeat your inner anti-Rove.

Unintended comedy, economic news reporting division.

The NYT just needs to bring us down, for some reason. All the economic news is good, but Vikas Bajaj, on the front page of the paper today, searches desperately for the bad. Check out the first few lines:

Gasoline is cheaper than it was before Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans. Consumer confidence jumped last month and new home sales hit a record. The stock market has been rising. Even the nation's beleaguered factories appear to be headed for a happy holiday season.

By most measures, the economy appears to be doing just fine. No, scratch that, it appears to be booming.

But as always with the United States economy, it is not quite that simple.

Consumer confidence is bouncing back from what was arguably some of its worst readings in years. Gasoline prices-the national average is now $2.15, according to the Energy Information Administration- have fallen because higher prices tamped down demand and supplies in the Gulf Coast have been slowly restored. The latest read on home sales, released today, contradicts virtually every other recent measure of housing activity that generally indicate a slowdown. And yes, manufacturers' fortunes are on the mend, but few besides airplane makers are celebrating.

It all means that the economy is likely to end the year with a splash, but that does not mean the broad economic picture next year will be even better.

How can anyone read that and not laugh?

A new dimension of post-Katrina anger.

There is the suffering that Hurricane Katrina caused for the people of New Orleans, but there is also the enlightenment Katrina brought about how much they suffered before the hurricane:

[A]fter tasting life elsewhere, they are returning with tales of public schools that actually supply textbooks published after the Reagan era, of public housing developments that look like suburban enclaves, of government workers who are not routinely dragged off to prison after pocketing bribes.

Local leaders have realized for weeks that they must reckon with widespread anger over how they handled the relief effort. But it is dawning on them that they are also going to have to contend with demands from residents who grew accustomed, however briefly, to the virtues of other communities....

"What's wrong with our school system, and what's wrong with the people running our school board?" asked Tess Blanks, who had lived here all her life before fleeing with her husband, Horace, to the Houston area, where they discovered that the public schools for their two children were significantly better. "Our children fell right into the swing of things in Texas. So guess what? It isn't the children. It's the people running our school system."

"Paris is burning, civil war, war zone, race riots -- the headlines, especially on TV, often have no nuance."

That's one of many complaints by the French about the bad press it's been getting. Your country is going to hell and you're begging for nuance:

The conservative Le Figaro was indignant about the way U.S. media reported from riot-hit areas such as Seine Saint Denis, the rundown area between the capital and its Charles de Gaulle airport to the north.

"American newspapers don't hesitate to compare Paris to Baghdad or Seine Saint Denis to the Gaza Strip and to call the crisis a 'Katrina of social disasters'," an editorial fumed in a reference to the recent hurricane.

I wonder how much nuance there was in Le Figaro's reports about Katrina.

Other commentators objected to the way foreign media stress the ethnic backgrounds of the rioters and the racial discrimination they complain about -- issues less prominent here because France officially does not recognise it has minority communities.

Aspirational? Or too convenient?

But the critics were not without self-criticism.

Le Figaro said the riots were "too good an opportunity to pass up, an opportunity to mock the country that claims to have invented human rights and that's always ready -- yes, it's true -- to lecture the rest of humanity."

Signs of a Rice candidacy.

Is Condoleezza Rice running for President?

It was Ms. Rice's second trip to the [South] since Hurricane Katrina, when she and other members of the Bush administration came under criticism for the handling of the storm's aftermath. On this trip, Ms. Rice met with hurricane victims and volunteers in Tuscaloosa and Birmingham. But much of the rest of her itinerary was of a more personal nature.

No recent secretary of state has taken a trip like this, to relate a life story. Nor has Ms. Rice previously put her own experiences on such public display.

There was her childhood friend, Carole C. Smitherman, now president of the Birmingham City Council, who recalled Ms. Rice as a softball player who could hit the ball as far as any boy, a student who devoured the great books "as casual reading," a ballet dancer and a pianist whose music "filled our streets."

John Cantelow, who taught band in elementary school, with Ms. Rice playing the bells, said, "She was a different kind of kid." He added, "She was more mature than the others and very, very, very - how can I explain it, for a kid? - very focused."

Despite her disavowal of political ambitions, it was hard not to imagine Ms. Rice bringing this biography to elective politics, with this visit as her coming-out party.

Ms. Rice seems genuinely uninterested in running for office, but she clearly enjoyed her celebrity status. And how unlikely would it be for a Republican presidential nominee in 2008, especially one lacking foreign policy credentials, to turn to her as a running mate, especially if the Democratic opponent is, say, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton?

What about seeming "genuinely uninterested in running for office" would not also be exactly the way she would want to seem if she were genuinely interested in running for President?

Wilma.

How can it be that there is another Category 5 hurricane? And here we are down to the "W" name. It's just a coincidence, isn't it, that Katrina, Rita, and Wilma have come in the same year?

Wilma's top sustained winds reached 175 mph early Wednesday in the most rapid strengthening ever recorded in a hurricane, said meteorologist Hugh Cobb of the National Hurricane Center in Miami. At the same time Tuesday, Wilma was only a tropical storm with winds of 70 mph.

Its confirmed pressure readings Wednesday morning dropped to 882 millibars _ the lowest ever measured in a hurricane in the Atlantic basin, according to the hurricane center. The strongest on record based on the lowest pressure reading is Hurricane Gilbert in 1988, which dipped to 888 millibars....

Forecasters said Wilma was more powerful than the devastating September 1935 hurricane that hit the Florida Keys, the strongest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall on record. But Wilma wasn't expected to keep its record strength for long, as higher disruptive atmospheric winds in the Gulf of Mexico around the hurricane should weaken it before landfall, Cobb said.

Well, that last sentence is reassuring, at least. Still, Katrina and Rita were Gulf of Mexico hurricanes.