Just terrible news:

Early details coming in, some say it’s 8.5, others say it’s 8.3. [Update as of midnight Pacific time, now apparently mag. 8.8] Either way, that’s potentially devastating:

SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) – A massive magnitude-8.3 earthquake struck near Concepcion, Chile early on Saturday, USGS reported, shaking buildings and causing blackouts in parts of the capital of Santiago.

A Reuters witness reported shaking buildings and loss of electricity in Santiago.

Reuters is also reporting a “Tsunami warning in effect for Chile and Peru, Tsunami watch for Ecuador”, according to the MSNBC-affiliated Breaking News on Twitter.

Nothing we can do except pray, wait for details and gear up for relief efforts.

According to USGS, it struck offshore near Maule, Chile – a province with a population of a bit more than 900,000. The good news is that the depth of the quake was nearly 22 miles down (contrast to the recent Haiti quake of 5 miles down); the bad news is that the Haiti quake was 7.0 – meaning, I think, that this quake would be something like nearly 20 times more powerful. An 8.8 is rated as a quake which can cause serious damage across hundreds of miles.

UPDATE: Tsunami set to hit Hawaii about 4:19 pm Eastern, a little more than an hour from now. This is quite distant, and it may end up being nothing much, but maybe otherwise.

God bless these poor people:

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — The tiny bodies of children lay in piles next to the ruins of their collapsed school. People with faces covered by white dust and the blood of open wounds roamed the streets. Frantic doctors wrapped heads and stitched up sliced limbs in a hotel parking lot.

The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, still struggling to recover from the relentless strikes of four catastrophic storms in 2008, was a picture of heartbreaking devastation Wednesday after a magnitude-7 earthquake.

Tuesday’s quake left a landscape of collapsed buildings — hospitals, schools, churches, ramshackle homes, even the gleaming national palace — the rubble sending up a white cloud that shrouded the entire capital.

All we can do, now, is pray – and rush to help.

UPDATE: Archbishiop Serge Miot among the dead.

UPDATE II: Missionaries of the Poor has people in Haiti, and their organization suffered no loss in the quake. I’ve donated to this excellent organization for quite a while, now, and highly recommend it.

UPDATE III: Food for the Poor is also an excellent group and is sending help to Haiti.

UPDATE IV: Archbishop Dolan talks about the tragedy in Haiti (video) – “Haiti is the broken Body of Christ”…

UPDATE V: Anchoress receives reports:

3:24 PM It’s a nightmare here. They are starting to dig mass graves for the many unclaimed bodies. Some areas,the smell is unbearable. We still are having tremors. Just now in fact.

UPDATE VI: Looks like Haiti will become a de-facto American protectorate over the next few days as Haiti’s government is essentially collapsed and non-functional. If we’re going to do it, might as well be in for a dime, in for a dollar…get a UN resolution putting Haiti into trusteeship under American protection. We’re going to end up spending billions, anyway, and we might as well do something permanently useful. And here’s where Obama can come in really handy – he’s probably the only American President who could ever get the international community behind such a move. But, keep in mind, if we do this, its for 50 years.

Nothing like the infamous tsunami of a few years ago, but still pretty bad:

LOS ANGELES/WELLINGTON (Reuters) – Authorities canceled a Pacific tsunami warning on Wednesday after a huge sub-sea quake sent waves over the Samoa islands, reportedly killing about 14 people but falling short of a regional disaster.

Tsunami waves hit American Samoa, a U.S. territory, killing 14 people, and also struck the nearby nation of Samoa, killing an unknown number of people, local media and officials said. There were unconfirmed reports of waves taller than 4 meters (13 ft).

“As of right now, everybody is up in the high mountain ranges,” said Senetenari Malele, announcer for local radio station Showers of Blessings. He said the local weather authority had released a statement with 14 dead in the last hour.

All of these events should remind each of us, every day, that the time of Judgment is always near – so, do the right thing…and remember to be kind to those you love: it may be your last chance.

Now that the initial panic has subsided, it is time to get down to brass tacks – and its actually looking a bit grim:

The new influenza strain circulating around most of the United States is putting a worrying number of young adults and children into the hospital and hitting more schools than usual, U.S. health officials said on Monday.

The H1N1 swine flu virus killed a vice principal at a New York City school over the weekend and has spread to 48 states. While it appears to be mild, it is affecting a disproportionate number of children, teenagers and young adults.

This includes people needing hospitalization — now up to 200, said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“That’s very unusual, to have so many people under 20 to require hospitalization, and some of them in (intensive care units),” Schuchat told reporters in a telephone briefing.

“We are now experiencing levels of influenza-like illness that are higher than usual for this time of year,” Schuchat added. “We are also seeing outbreaks in schools, which is extremely unusual for this time of year.”

And just wait until the real flu season starts in the Fall – and wait until it hits in the much more septic cities of the Third World. We’re no where near out of the woods on this.

Still growing out there:

The United States now has 642 cases of the new H1N1 flu, with two deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

CDC officials have said they expect the new swine flu to spread to all 50 states, to cause severe disease and some deaths, although most cases have been mild.

Mexico has confirmed 42 deaths and said it was impossible to get samples from about 70 more people who died of flu-like illness recently. Globally, more than 1,600 cases have been reported in 23 countries.

We have a critical case here in Las Vegas now, too. I’m glad the panic is dying down, but this is going to be a problem and the worst of it may very well be yet to come.

Rather alarming news:

The World Health Organisation has warned that “all of humanity is under threat” from a potential swine flu pandemic and called for “global solidarity” to combat the virus.

The plea came as the WHO raised the swine flu threat awareness level to 5 out of 6, indicating that the world is on the brink of a pandemic.

Holland and Switzerland both confirmed their first cases of swine flu on Thursday, bringing the total number of countries affected around the world to 11.

Some people are wondering why we’re not closing the borders and, since were not, whether this is just a bit of panic-mongering by governments which feed on crisis? I don’t think so – in fact, I think its likely worse than is being reported. Metropolitan Mexico City is more than 20 million people, many of whom live in squalid slums where services are nearly non-existent…such people are not going to the hospital and getting counted in the official figures; and how many people are willing to go into the slums to survey the rate of infection? A recent poll of Mexico City residents found that 57% figured the government is under-reporting the number of swine flu cases – I tend to agree, though not, perhaps, for the reasons Mexicans are doubtful. They are doubtful because their hopelessly corrupt and inefficient government is nearly always lying to them – I am doubtful because I don’t think the Mexican government has the resources to really get a grip on the crisis.

As to the subject of closing the borders – the disease is already in the United States so we’re pretty much going to suffer what we’ll suffer…having one more Mexican with the flu come in won’t materially affect the outcome. Unless we want to forbid all travel within the United States, closing the borders would be worthless…and even if we wanted to forbid travel, we can’t; our cities need to be fed. No point in saving a million people from the swine flu only to have ten million die of diseases brought about by shortages in the cities. But I’m also not too concerned about us.

Why is that? Because, goes my thinking (confirmed with a bit of knowledge gleaned from the reports) the people who are dying aren’t dying of the flu but of secondary complications – a person weakened by the flu gets pneumonia and that is what kills him. Now, why is it so prevalent in Mexico? Because they have a population already pre-weakened by substandard nutrition, high levels of industrial pollution and lack of basic medical care – the disease gets in to such a population and runs wild. My worry is that this same sequence of events will repeat itself in Cairo, Karachi, Mumbai and a score of other large, Third World cities which are situated similar to Mexico City – very large metro populations including very large slums. This flu breaks into those areas of the world and we could really have tens of millions at risk of death, combined with a massive social disruption as people try to flee the disease.

We should keep in mind that such a thing as a flu pandemic doesn’t necessarily just burn through once and its over – the flu of 1918 came, went and then came back again. We’re not out of the woods by a long shot – though there is still that chance that the strain will fizzle and we’ll be spared the worst of what could happen.

Ed Note: This seems to be the growing story, so we’ll bump it up.

Time to start praying that this passes us by.

UPDATE: 20 cases in the US.

UPDATE II: CDC Swine Flu page Anyone have confirmation that swine flu was the 1919 “Spanish flu” pandemic?

UPDATE III: Six cases in Canada. Three cases in Spain.

UPDATE IV: Obama Administration not exactly Johnny-on-the-spot

UPDATE V: BBC readers report from Mexico.

UPDATE VI: 103 deaths reported in Mexico. as of about 1am EDT, April 27th.

UPDATE VII: San Antonio Schools closed.

UPDATE VIII: All schools closed in Mexico.

UPDATE IX: 2,000 cases in Mexico.

UPDATE X: Its all the GOP’s fault (and don’t try to act like any of you were surprised that this allegation cropped up).

UPDATE XI: I’m no epidemiologist, but this website seems to have people who know what they are talking about, epidemic-wise.

UPDATE XII: Simple, common-sense ways you can avoid the flu.

UPDATE XIII: 7 hospitalized in the US.

UPDATE XIV: With 150 confirmed dead, Mexico closes all eateries.

UPDATE XV: Had a scare at my place of work – employee came down with flu-like symptoms, but ended up not being swine flu. End result: one department got the day off, rest of company breathed sigh of relief.

UPDATE XVI: Relative in Reno says a child she knows has come down with a confirmed case of swine flu.

UPDATE XVII: Cases confirmed in 11 States.

UPDATE XVIII: Biden opens mouth, inserts foot. For some reason, this is still considered news.

I caught a good deal of it yesterday morning, and there were a couple bits I wanted to comment on:

Q — that you think the Republican Party needs to be more inclusive. Who needs to hear that message inside the Republican Party?

THE PRESIDENT: You see, I am concerned that, in the wake of the defeat, that the temptation will be to look inward and to say, well, here’s a litmus test you must adhere to.

This party will come back. But the party’s message has got to be that different points of view are included in the party. And — take, for example, the immigration debate. That’s obviously a highly contentious issue. And the problem with the outcome of the initial round of the debate was that some people said, well, Republicans don’t like immigrants. Now, that may be fair or unfair, but that’s what — that’s the image that came out.

And, you know, if the image is we don’t like immigrants, then there’s probably somebody else out there saying, well, if they don’t like the immigrants, they probably don’t like me, as well. And so my point was, is that our party has got to be compassionate and broad-minded.

I remember the 1964 elections. My dad happened to be running for the United State Senate then and, you know, got landslided with the Johnson landslide in the state of Texas. But it wasn’t just George Bush who got defeated; the Republican Party was pretty well decimated at the time. At least that’s what they — I think that’s how the pundits viewed it. And then ‘66 there was a resurgence. And the same thing can happen this time, but we just got to make sure our message is broad-gauged and compassionate; that we care about people’s lives, and we’ve got a plan to help them improve their lives.

After watching the presser, I headed off to work an on the radio was Laura Ingraham – I highly respect this lady for the passion of her address and the good humor with which she approaches issues, but as regards President Bush and immigration, the good lady goes a bit bonkers. One of the first questions which came to my mind as the rant about how President Bush mucked up immigration reform spilled from the radio was, “so, you think you’re going to get a better deal under Obama?”.

For full disclosure, I was one of the baker’s dozen or so people who backed the Bush immigration plan – and I fully understand the ire of people concerning the flood of illegals which walked across our borders over the past 20 years. But, then again, we pretty much did everything but send them an engraved invitation – to fault President Bush, decades into the problem, for not rounding up 12 million or so people and deporting them was asinine…and if we get past the deportation issue, then there remains the problem of what to do with the people who are here. Call it amnesty if you want, but President Bush was on the right track, and it would have done four things:

1. Stopped the flow of illegals as there would be no reason to be an illegal anymore.

2. Brought illegals into the legitimate economy where they can properly pay taxes and have health insurance, etc and thus stop burdening the taxpayers.

3. Ended the issue and not left it for Obama and his liberal Democrats to work out a new comprehensive “reform” which will be amnesty, pure and simple.

4. It would have made the GOP the party which did the right thing vis a vis our largest and fastest growing ethnic group, hispanics. That right there was about 2 million votes lost for the GOP – if you figure on what GW managed to pull in 2004 and what McCain pulled in 2008. Not enough, in and of itself, to tip the election back to us, but anyone who wants to throw away 2 million votes just to be an immigration purist is a fool.

In the larger sense, what the conservative complaints about President Bush boiled down to was a carp about President Bush not adhering to a purely Reaganite line…but, then again, neither did Reagan. And don’t you see? You can’t just follow the script – you sometimes have to do what you think is best, even if its not ideologically pure. Too often we on the right over the past 10 years have shot ourselves in the foot because we insisted on making the perfect the enemy of the good. Liberals do this, too – and, indeed, they do it more than we do (it takes a real fanatic, for instance, to argue against the Born Alive Act) – but because they are fools doesn’t mean we have to be, too. What I’m saying here, fellow conservatives, is to remember that politics is the art of the possible.

Then there’s this bit:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, in recent days, there’s been a fair amount of discussion in legal circles about whether or not you might give preemptive pardons, pardons in advance, to officials of your administration who engaged in anything from harsh interrogation tactics to perhaps dismissing U.S. attorneys. I’d like to know, have you given any consideration to this? And are you planning on it?

THE PRESIDENT: I won’t be discussing pardons here at this press conference.

The translation of the question: “Are you going to pardon all the war criminals in your Administration?”. Deftly handled, and then President Bush graciously allowed the reporter (from the New York times, naturally) to have a second go at it:

Q And I’m not trying to play “gotcha,” but I wonder, when you look back over the long arc of your presidency, do you think, in retrospect, that you have made any mistakes? And if so, what is the single biggest mistake that you may have made?

THE PRESIDENT: Gotcha. I have often said that history will look back and determine that which could have been done better, or, you know, mistakes I made. Clearly putting a “Mission Accomplished” on a aircraft carrier was a mistake. It sent the wrong message. We were trying to say something differently, but nevertheless, it conveyed a different message. Obviously, some of my rhetoric has been a mistake.

I’ve thought long and hard about Katrina — you know, could I have done something differently, like land Air Force One either in New Orleans or Baton Rouge. The problem with that and — is that law enforcement would have been pulled away from the mission. And then your questions, I suspect, would have been, how could you possibly have flown Air Force One into Baton Rouge, and police officers that were needed to expedite traffic out of New Orleans were taken off the task to look after you?

I believe that running the Social Security idea right after the ‘04 elections was a mistake. I should have argued for immigration reform. And the reason why is, is that — you know, one of the lessons I learned as governor of Texas, by the way, is legislative branches tend to be risk-adverse. In other words, sometimes legislatures have the tendency to ask, why should I take on a hard task when a crisis is not imminent? And the crisis was not imminent for Social Security as far as many members of Congress was concerned.

As an aside, one thing I proved is that you can actually campaign on the issue and get elected. In other words, I don’t believe talking about Social Security is the third rail of American politics. I, matter of fact, think that in the future, not talking about how you intend to fix Social Security is going to be the third rail of American politics.

One thing about the presidency is that you can make — only make decisions, you know, on the information at hand. You don’t get to have information after you’ve made the decision. That’s not the way it works. And you stand by your decisions, and you do your best to explain why you made the decisions you made.

There have been disappointments. Abu Ghraib obviously was a huge disappointment during the presidency. Not having weapons of mass destruction was a significant disappointment. I don’t know if you want to call those mistakes or not, but they were — things didn’t go according to plan, let’s put it that way.

Anyway, I think historians will look back and they’ll be able to have a better look at mistakes after some time has passed. Along Jake’s question, there is no such thing as short-term history. I don’t think you can possibly get the full breadth of an administration until time has passed: Where does a President’s — did a President’s decisions have the impact that he thought they would, or he thought they would, over time? Or how did this President compare to future Presidents, given a set of circumstances that may be similar or not similar? I mean, there’s — it’s just impossible to do. And I’m comfortable with that.

In a nutshell, that is the description of what being President is like – the attempt to make the right decisions with the full knowledge that no matter what you do, there is always a way to second guess it later and, additionally, there will always be critics. Fortunately for himself – and for us – President Bush is a very centered and reasonable man who is upheld in his day to day living by faith in God. After 8 years of being through the meatgrinder of American politics and having the most wickedly false slanders launched against him, he’s still the same man who came to town…gracious, thoughtful and unwilling to get into a pissing match with those who hammered him for years.

In a way, I already miss President Bush – he’s still in office, but of course its more the illusion of a Presidency at this point…unless there’s a crisis, there will be no further call for President Bush, and even if there is a crisis he’ll have the wisdom to immediately bring Obama in and not make any decisions without his knowledge and consent, given that whatever decisions are made now will be carried through by Obama, for good or ill. I’m going to miss him more as time goes on – and unless Obama turns out to be all I don’t expect him to be, the whole nation and the whole world will come to miss him, too.

It’s about time.

Political newcomer Anh “Joseph” Cao, a Republican, has beaten nine-term incumbent William Jefferson, a Democrat, in the 2nd Congressional District, according to the Associated Press.

With 79 percent of the district’s 492 precincts reporting, Cao, a Venetian Isles attorney who has enjoyed strong backing from local and national GOP organizations, is leading 53 percent to 43 percent over Jefferson. Green Party candidate Malik Rahim has 3 percent, while Libertarian Gregory Kahn is trailing with less than 1 percent.

The district, which was drawn to give African Americans an electoral advantage, covers most of New Orleans, most of Jefferson Parish’s West Bank and parts of south Kenner. About two-thirds of the district’s voters are registered as Democrats.

It is a good day when a corrupt Democrat finally gets defeated… one down… a lot more to go.
Next up… trial and conviction.

I think a celebratory glass of Cabernet Sauvignon is in order.

UPDATE: How sweet it is.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: Also noted is that the Democrats seem to have lost the other runoff House election in Louisiana. The reason does appear to be lower-than-necessary black turnout – one wonders that now there’s a black man to be in the White House will black turnout drop off heavily for all the special and off-year elections? For the 2010 mid-terms? The test will be in next year’s Virginia governors race.

Nothing like Cynthia McKinney – whom you lefties out there supported tooth and nail – to add an element of spice to the campaign:

It wouldn’t be an election cycle without Cynthia McKinney’s lunacy, and fortunately she hasn’t shied away from providing it. Here, we watch as the Green Party’s endorsed presidential candidate accuses National Guard soldiers of committing 5,000 murders of prisoners in the wake of Hurricane Katrina…

…If you think that this is the kind of insanity one normally hears from Alex Jones, well … you’d be right. The conspiracy theorists on the Left and the Right tend to embrace each other at a certain point, just south of rationality. For these people, little points like evidence and common sense provide no obstacles at all to paranoia and fantasy.

For instance, let’s skip past the extremely weak sourcing McKinney uses to make her charges and go right to some obvious points. Wouldn’t the families of these 5,000 prisoners wonder what happened to them? And which prisoners, specifically, have not been accounted for? At least a few names of people who were in Louisiana state custody before Katrina and then not in custody afterwards would provide a starting point for any investigation. And it’s possible to lose a few bodies in the Louisiana swamps, but not even that legendary territory could hide 5,000 of them at once without a few of the locals taking notice.

Normally, we’d dismiss this kind of idiocy, but this is no ordinary idiot. McKinney is a former member of Congress and a candidate for President on a party that wants to claim national legitimacy. This shows the intellectual level of the Greens, but it also puts in play yet another baseless conspiracy theory about Katrina and its aftermath. We’ll be hearing this lie for the next few years, thanks to McKinney.

Is there any difference between this and Maxine Waters’ accusation that the CIA deliberate brought crack in to destroy America’s black community? Between this and Murtha’s accusation that the Marines in Haditha were cold blooded murderers? Between this and Ted Kennedy’s accusation that President Bush cooked up Iraq in Texas? Between this and Obama’s accusation that McCain cheated in the Saddleback debate? The kook left is the kook left – and they are in control of the Democratic party; the fact that a screwball like McKinney has switched from Democrat to Green just shows that there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between any of these paranoid, hate filled and ignorant leftists.

Just one big mess:

Rescue crews navigated flooded and debris-strewn streets Saturday to search for those who insisted on staying and riding out a fierce Hurricane Ike, which shattered skyscraper windows, cut power to millions and flooded thousands of homes as it sloshed across the Texas coast.

About those who stayed behind – I do wonder if we should cite them? I mean, by staying behind they risk danger to police and fire personnel, as well as increasing the cost of hurricane recovery to States and municipalities. I’m not talking about jail time – but maybe a $1,000 “Idiot Fine”? And we should allow their insurance carriers to cancel their policy…and, of course, deny them any government aid in rebuilding. You have a right, in America, to be an idiot – but you don’t have a right to be rescued from your idiocy.

One other point – there are stories of gas prices in various places being 5, 6 or more dollars per gallon – all States should enact laws, if they already haven’t, against this sort of thing…its un-American, un-Christian and inhuman to jack up prices like that during a crisis.

There is a discussion over at NRO’s The Corner as to whether or not the GOP’s scale-down of the convention yesterday indicates we are becoming a rather wussy nation. Here’s a sample:

…saying, basically, that the country has become hopelessly wussified, to be blunt. (I said “Oprahfied,” which is more indirect.) Many have pointed out that, hurricanes aside, we’re at war, in two different countries. They have also said that conventions were held in 1944: when many Americans were engaged in an awful, titanic struggle.

And I thought you might like to read this:

Jay,

Let me give you another example of hardiness. My grandmother is a Holocaust survivor. She was born on September 11, 1912. We live in New York City. In 2001 for her 89th birthday we had planned to go out for a big dinner for her. Needless to say, the day didn’t turn out as planned. But we as a family decided to carry on. Even with the ruins of the WTC still smoldering in the distance, we took our grandmother out to dinner. We found one of the few restaurants on the Upper East Side that were open, and we celebrated.

As my grandmother said, she had been through worse in her life, and had made it this far. As far as she was concerned, they could bring it on, because at this point she wasn’t going to back down or let anything stop her.

I could relate much more — citing different examples from different readers — but you more than get our drift…

There is something to be said for this theory, but I don’t think that this really indicates a nationally mushiness as much as a nation besieged by lies in our modern Age of Lies.

The reason President Bush skipped the convention and the GOP de-facto did nothing on the convention’s first day is because President Bush and the GOP were blindsided by a series of lies surrounding Hurricane Katrina. The facts of Katrina didn’t matter in 2005, and they don’t matter today – all that matters is that back then the MSM in conjunction with Democrats made it out that Katrina was the worst thing which ever happened and that President Bush and the GOP were responsible for the catastrophe. That Katrina wasn’t even close to the worst disaster we’ve ever suffered and that President Bush and the GOP had absolutely nothing to do with the governmental failures during Katrina is irrelevant. Because the lies about Katrina stuck, the President and the GOP had to act as if the lies were true, and thus set things up so that President and party could come out on top of the Hurricane Gustav situation. And do keep in mind that its not like President Bush and the GOP will gain credit for the fact that Gustav blew through without any serious mishap – no, not at all; when dealing with lies, things don’t work like that. The only thing Bush and party get out of this dance to the liar’s tune is no further damage on the issue.

Those who say the GOP show should have gone on as scheduled are right in the sense that the truth of the matter is that President Bush couldn’t do any more about Gustav as it made landfall than he could about Katrina when it made landfall. Furthermore, that this or that speech/celebration went on in Minnesota would also neither harm nor help any efforts of the people affected by Gustav. But to have had President Bush give his speech and to have had the GOP in a celebratory mood would have allowed the liars a firm foothold to bash President and party over Katrina, even though Gustav largely fizzled. The truth will out, as they say, but there’s no saying just when it will do so – and the truth about Katrina might be a long time coming, and may have to wait until this generation passes away. This is not a new thing, by the way – our Age of Lies goes back quite a bit, and the most infamous early case of it nearly derailed Churchill’s political career with the lies spread about the British disaster at the Dardanelles during the First World War.

What are we to do about this? Nothing in the immediate sense. In the longer term: keep winning at the ballot box. The lies are put out by the left in service of leftwing political goals…the longer we keep the left out of power and the more we can reform things so that the left has less and less influence, the weaker will be their ability to make a lie take hold and become part of the national memory. The Age of Lies didn’t just spring up – it grew and grew over a century and only came to fruition in the 20th century…it may take just as long to clear it out. But, meanwhile, we have to be careful in what we do – careful to do things in such a way that the truth can come out, and the liars are prevented as far as possible from confusing the issue.

O Heavenly Father, all the elements of nature obey Your commands, including hurricanes. Calm the storms that threaten us and turn our fear of Your power into praise of Your goodness.

Amen.

The evacuations are done, the resources are ready to go – now lets hope and pray that it all ends up an excellent exercise and the storm fizzles.