What’s Going On
No news round-up tonight as I watch Hurricane Ike batter my former home-state.
I’ll have one tomorrow.
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Countdown: Reviewing Palin’s Crash and Burn
Tonight’s installment wasn’t any better than last nights. This Governor has a lot of work to do before she gets into a debate.
Had to fix the video.
Hurricane Ike On The Way
This will be my last post before Hurricane Ike reaches the Houston/Galveston area. We live in Houston. ( I’m Texas Liberal. Not Dr. Errington who is the owner of this blog.) It’s unclear what conditions will be like after the hurricane. We don’t live in a flood area and we are likely to be fine. Strong winds in the city of Houston are a cause for thought. But we will come out of it okay.
As it stands now, this storm is a very severe matter. Because of its erratic course, and because Houston has not had the recent experience New Orleans had of Hurricane Katrina, the national attention on this storm is coming only now.
It’s possible the path of the storm may change in the next few hours in a way that would minimize damage to the most populated portions of the Houston/Galveston area. Though I would not bet much on this prospect. The best scenario, that the storm shrink and weaken, is a hope we can also retain to the last moment. Yet again, the course and force of the storm appears largely set.
Above is a picture of Galveston, Texas. You see how low-lying it is. A very strong storm surge is expected and the island may be fully undewater by this evening. I’ve visited Galveston at least every couple of months for the ten years I’ve lived in Houston. Galveston is a fifty mile drive to the south. I view Galveston as a home away from home. I hope that the city and the island are able to recover as quickly as possible. Here is some history of Galveston.
We have the things we need for an extended power outage. I think having no power for one or two weeks is our greatest concern. That this is what worries me most shows that I am fortunate. Many people living closer to the coast are going to lose their homes. Some people will be hurt and I suppose some will die.
Let me take this chance to express my complete contempt for the idiocy of the ongoing Presidential campaign. Maybe the one advantage of not having power for a few days is that I’ll not have to hear about the campaign. You get a clear sense of how awful and dumb the campaign is when something as potentially bad as this hurricane is at your doorstep. A leading reason it is so bad is the constant lying by John McCain and his campaign. We have more important concerns to discuss than deflecting these lies.
Just as a hurricane can be a life and death matter, so is politics in many respects. Issues of greater access to health insurance and climate change need to be addressed now.
During the hurricane and in the days after, I’ll be reading What Hath God Wrought—The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 by Daniel Walker Howe. This book is the most recent Pulitzer Prize winner for history.
Good luck to everybody impacted by Hurricane Ike. I’ll post again on WTO? after the storm has passed, and depending on when power is back up and running.
Obama’s Cookouts For Change!
I’m Errington Thompson, and I approve of this ad. 
Palin’s “Oops!” (Updated)
No matter what you think of Governor Sarah Palin, no matter if you are a Republican or a Democrat, you have to say that her overall performance in her exclusive ABC interview with Charlie Gibson was adequate until she got to the Bush doctrine question. She had absolutely no idea what the Bush doctrine was. If there is a legacy the Bush presidency, it would probably be this doctrine. President Bush has said that we have the right to preemptively strike any country we deem a “significant” threat.
I thought she was prepped for this interview. The majority of the interview was exactly as we would’ve expected. She was strong and forceful. She was aggressive. She was somewhat demeaning when she said the word “Charlie.”
Political Animal has a few thoughts:
There are more than a few angles to consider, so let’s just take this one at a time. As Hilzoy noted last night, and as the video to the right shows, Palin doesn’t have the foggiest idea what the Bush Doctrine is. Literally, not a clue about the guiding U.S. foreign policy principle of the last seven years. When she tried to fudge it, her ignorance on the issue was even more glaring.
Second, she really didn’t want to answer an important question about U.S. strikes in Pakistan. It’s not like this was a curveball — the issue was in yesterday’s New York Times. Eventually, after trying to wiggle out of the question, Palin eventually seemed to support unilateral strikes, which contradicts the stated McCain policy.
Third, Palin believes Russia was “unprovoked” in its military incursion against Georgia. That’s just wrong. He has more here.
Newshoggers has labeled Governor Palin possibly most dangerous woman in the world (sounds like a James Bond title):
She is a novelty act not a serious candidate. The only question is if the novelty will fade before November.
About a week ago we found out that Gov. Sarah Palin had the ability to read the teleprompter. Last night, we found out that her depth of ignorance on a variety of topics was mind-boggling. I look for the McCain camp to hit ABC News and Charlie Gibson, this morning for his “unfair” questions and disrespectful tone. This is in spite of the fact that Charlie Gibson is the most sympathetic of the major anchors to the Republican party, in my opinion. It appears in fact that he even tried to help Sarah Palin and several of the questions especially on the Bush doctrine.
Update from ThinkProgress.org:
While Gibson did not get the Bush Doctrine wholly correct, he was at least on the right track. In fact, the Bush Doctrine is predicated on “preventive war” not “preemptive war” — a sharp distinction in which the former justifies launching war in an attempt to “prevent” a threat from emerging (i.e. the Iraq war), while in the latter case, the threat has already materialized.
“Preemptive war” is, as Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) once observed, something “the global community is generally tolerant of,” while “preventive attacks” — a policy that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has not rejected — “have generally been condemned.”
Indeed, as Matt Yglesias notes, Bush and McCain agree that the U.S. has “the right to use military force unilaterally even where there isn’t an imminent threat” and that “Palin’s view is sensible, so it would be interesting to learn her opinion of her running mate’s much less sensible view.”
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Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, fulltime sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
