Go Irish! Beat Michigan!
	Saturday, September 13th, 2008 at 8:30am

Okay, all that stuff I wrote yesterday about unity and togetherness and remembering who the real Enemy is?

I forgot all about the Michigan Wolverines, those bastards. After teaching Notre Dame how to play football and promptly finding out we're better at it, they tried to smother Notre Dame football in its infancy -- and failed. And now we hate them.

(Oh, don't bother me with the fact that this was a century ago. This is college football fandom. Logic and rationality will not be tolerated.)

This year, Michigan has a new coach, a brand new offensive system, new players at key positions all over the place, and some rather unfortunate injuries. In short, they're in a rebuilding year. But Notre Dame ain't exactly in top form right now either, though we're further along with the rebuilding process than Michigan is.

Last week, I predicted we'd beat San Diego State 28-10. We ended up winning 21-13 and looked pretty shaky for three quarters before pouring it on in the 4th. But the running game showed signs of life, Jimmy Clausen shook off his early miscues to lead two rock-solid touchdown drives, and Golden Tate emerged as the star of the wide-receiver corps.

Last week, I also predicted we would lose to Michigan. But after seeing how both teams have played so far this season, I'm changing my mind. I'm still sticking with an 8-4 mark for the season, and I'm flipping the Stanford game to a loss since I think they could pull one over on us. But for today's game, I think we'll see more of what we saw in the 4th quarter of the San Diego State game. Notre Dame will score 3 touchdowns but botch another extra point, and will win 20-17.

GO IRISH!!!
 

	September 12th
	Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 8:30am

Everywhere you turned yesterday, I'm sure you were told to remember September 11th.

I'm taking a different tack here. I'm going to ask you to remember September 12th.

On September 11th, 2001, terrible things happened. We as a nation were shocked and off-balance, reacting to changing conditions on the fly, no time to think, just act and act NOW.

On September 12th, we woke up a new nation. The dust had settled. We'd had a night to sleep on it. We'd had time to catch our breath, to think, to ponder, to consider what the previous day's events meant for the future direction of the United States of America. We had a general plan to go find who did this and kick their ass, and September 12th was when we started filling in the details for that plan.

It was our nation's finest day. For the first time in a long time, we were almost unanimously united behind one cause, one identity. We were all Americans first and foremost, and everything else was a distant second. We were united in a way that had once seemed impossible in the aftermath of the divisive 2000 presidential election. We had a goal. We had a mission. We were united.

You don't need me to tell you how far we've gotten from that day.

For those of us who follow politics, it is so damn easy to cluster up with people who hold similar views to our own, and to look upon anyone who doesn't share those views as The Enemy. We smear, we insult, we twist the truth. I do it. You do it. We do it because we think these battles of political ideology are all-encompassing and overarchingly important, and that we must do anything -- anything -- to win that ideological battle.

News flash for all of you, liberal or conservative, who have taken a side in the ideological battle that divides our nation right now. To both sides, I say to you that the vast majority of those people on the opposite side of you are not engaged in an insidious plot to destroy the country. They actually think their ideas will help the country. You believe they're wrong, of course, and that's fine. I'm not asking you to give up on the debate or to roll over and accept ideas you disagree with. But I am asking you to acknowledge the good motives of those you disagree with, those who truly believe their ideas are what's best for this country, even though you disagree.

Yeah, okay, there's a few miscreants on the other side with baser, more selfish motives. Look around and you'll see a few of those same miscreants on your own side as well. But they're a tiny minority, and they're dwarved by the sheer hordes of people with purer motives, who just want a better nation to live in.

We forget what our true goal should be: to make the United States of America a better nation. We focus on the short-sighted goal of winning the argument just for the sake of winning the argument, and we lose track of the actual reason why we should be having that argument at all.

And in the process, we forget who the true Enemies are: those who have the explicit, stated and intentional goal of bringing down the United States of America.

On September 12th, 2001, we knew who our true Enemies actually are: radical, fundamentalist Islamic terrorists who hate everything about this nation and want it brought down, who twist our own freedoms against us to find and exploit our weaknesses until they can strike at those weaknesses with devastating force.

Kinda puts that argument with your next-door neighbor about government-run health-care in perspective, doesn't it?

He isn't the enemy. On September 12th, 2001, you knew that.

It's time to remember that again.

Remember September 12th, 2001.
 

	Figures don't lie: primary election follow-up
	Monday, September 8th, 2008 at 10:30am

Did you know Volusia County had 106% voter-turnout for the 8/26 primary election?

It's true! I read it on the Voter Turnout page on the Florida Division of Elections website!

Well, okay, it's most likely a typo, since the chart shows only 35,984 registered voters in Volusia, compared to 300,000+ in Brevard. I'm pretty sure there's a digit missing from Volusia's number, and that in turn threw off the turnout calculation. I've already e-mailed the webmaster to have it corrected, but it was still funny to see more votes counted than actual registered voters. For a second there, I thought I was gonna break a major voter-fraud story, but alas, it was not to be. :)

I also saw that Brevard County finalized it's election reporting with the state on 8/29, and the only counties that turned in their results on earlier days were tiny little rural counties with only a handful of votes to count. So, Brevard continues its streak of smoothly-run and quickly-counted elections, truly a testament to the quality job done by the Brevard County Supervisor of Elections office. It's also a great contrast to Miami-Dade County, which 12 days later still hasn't finished counting their absentee ballots yet.

(I also noticed Gilchrist County is missing entirely from the state's election website for the 8/26 primary. Why did I notice that Gilchrist County is missing at all? Because I'm an insufferable nerd, that's why.)

UPDATE: 9/9 at 4:15pm - The webmaster for the state election website fixed the Volusia County numbers yesterday. She also advised me that Gilchrist County only had local elections on 8/26, no state elections; hence the omission.

But I still find it odd that it took 12 days for anyone to notice Volusia County had a reported election turnout of 106%, and that it took some rookie blogger from Palm Bay to find it at all. I do this as a hobby for a few hours a week. Reporters get paid for this. Nobody in the mainstream media looks for election anomalies at all?!? Yikes.
 

	Housekeeping
	Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 9:15am

Between Tropical Storm Fay, Tropical Storm Hanna, Hurricane Ike, the 8/26 primary, and the invasion of Buenos Aires by an army of voracious bug-like aliens, I've once again fallen behind on a bevy of great local stories. And I'm just not gonna have time to do full write-ups on all of them, but I don't want to let them slip into the ether unnoted either. So let me cue up "Janitor" by Toad the Wet Sprocket here, and then I'll give ya some quick-hits.

	I DON'T like Ike!
	Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 8:20am

IKE

The threat to Brevard County from Hurricane Ike seems to be dropping significantly, though the 5-day forecast should serve as a reminder that we're not entirely out of the woods yet. Basically, a ridge of high-pressure to Ike's north is keeping him on track to strike the Florida Keys within the next 3 days, followed by a turn to the north once he gets around the edge of that ridge. But it all depends on that ridge reaching far enough west and staying strong enough to hold Ike at bay. If that ridge doesn't hold, we could still be saying "Hi!" to a major hurricane by mid-week. But my gut tells me the ridge is gonna hold.

So, keep Ike in the back of your mind so he doesn't get the chance to surprise you, but don't worry too much about him hitting us either.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hanna came a bit closer to Brevard than the forecast called for Friday morning, but ultimately turned away at the last second for a date with the rest of the eastern seaboard. The weather got a little ugly at times on Friday as a result, but not too bad.

And Josephine is hanging on for dear life, sputtering along as a tropical depression while proclaiming "I'm not dead!" in a strained British accent. You can safely ignore her.

As always, turn to Dr. Jeff Masters if you want to hear about all of this from someone who actually has a clue what he's talking about.
 

	Submitted Without Comment
	Saturday, September 6th, 2008 at 8:15am

	"I'm suuuuuuuuuing!"
	Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 2:45am

On Monday, Linda McKinney of SpaceCoastConservative.com posted a great piece on the sudden local trend of candidates threatening anyone who dares to disagree with their campaign with a lawsuit for libel, particularly Mitch Needelman in the Clerk of Court race and Maureen Rupe in the Democratic primary for County Commission District 1. It's a good read. Check it out, and the rest of Linda's site while you're at it.

It should be noted that in Needelman's case it was just an overzealous staffer who uttered the lawsuit threat, but in Maureen Rupe's case it's been Ms. Rupe herself along with her husband. But no actual lawsuits have been filed yet, and it doesn't take long to realize why: because the case for libel just isn't there. To win a libel case, you have to prove that the defendant wrote and published something about you, that what they wrote was false, that they knew it was false, that they intended to harm you, and that you were actually harmed. It's not enough that someone wrote something nasty about you that you disagree with. You have to prove it was false. That's a high standard, and that's where libel lawsuits usually sputter and fail.

So why the threats? Why threaten to file a lawsuit that is pretty much doomed from the get-go? It either demonstrates a complete and total lack of understanding of the law (in which case, why the hell are you running for an office in which you'll either be writing or enforcing laws?), or it's simply an attempt to silence political opposition rather than responding to it or debating it (because telling someone to shut up is so much easier than using logic and rhetoric to refute their arguments). Whatever the reason, it's ham-handed and stupid.

It's also just plain ineffective. With both Needelman and Rupe, the people who got the lawsuit threats refused to stop criticizing the candidates, and instead kept their criticism up right through to the 8/26 primary. So the lawsuit threats accomplished absolutely nothing -- except for making the candidates look like bullies. And I don't think it's a coincidence that both candidates went on be defeated in their races.

Oh, and the really funny part of all? One could make an argument for an actual honest-to-God slander charge in one of these races: Mitch Needelman accusing Scott Ellis of signing the check on the infamous Sarno landfill land-purchase. Needelman said it himself, live on-the-air on WMMB. Only it turned out to be false because Ellis wasn't even in office yet when the purchase happened. Ellis could've filed the lawsuit that afternoon. It would've been a difficult case, since he'd have to prove that Needelman knew it was false when he made that accusation, but Ellis certainly could've threatened to file suit just for starters.

You know what Ellis did instead? He denied it, put the proof out there for the world to see... and then he stepped back and got out of the way. Needelman was left scrambling to apologize for getting the facts wrong. Ellis scored major political points. And he did it all without threatening to sue anybody.

THAT is how you handle it when the opposition gets your record wrong in a politcal campaign. Lay the facts out there. Show the world why the opposition is wrong, and win the debate by outscoring the other side. Threatening to call in the lawyers just makes you look petty, small and stupid.

Now, if your opponent is accusing you of sacrificing homeless three-legged tabby kittens on an altar of skulls on the summer solstice to appease the dark spirit of Mickey Rooney or something ridiculous and outlandish like that, okay, call in Morgan & Morgan. ("For the people!") But if it's a simple disagreement over one small part of your overall record, just prove them wrong and let the voters sort it out.

...

Oh, this is apropos of absolutely nothing, but I couldn't leave it out. :)

Peter Parker: That's slander!
J. Jonah Jameson: It is not! I resent that! Slander is spoken. In print, it's libel.
 

	Hanna is close to making her move
	Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 12:30am

HANNA

I'm still watching Tropical Storm Hanna, of course. She's been steadily drifting southward, so far south that she's almost reached the coast of Haiti. The computer models are pretty much unanimous that she'll begin making her move sometime Wednesday afternoon, starting a north-northwest track that will take her along the coast of Florida and up in between Savannah and Charleston. The forecast path has been nudged further east and away from us, but we're still well within the forecast cone.

The next 24 hours will be critical in figuring out where exactly Hanna will go and what sort of impact we'll get from her. My earlier worries are relaxing somewhat, and I think the worst we'll see is some feeder bands and squall lines with gusts over 40 mph on Thursday night and Friday morning. But we definitely shouldn't get complacent, not with a tropical storm (possibly a hurricane again by tomorrow) passing so close to us.

And of course there's still Tropical Storm Ike and Tropical Storm Josephine as well. Ike is starting to look like he'll pass to our south and head into the Gulf of Mexico, but it's just way too early to be certain. Josephine is starting to show signs that she'll curve harmlessly out to sea but again it's too early to be sure.

This space reserved for the obligatory link to the tropical weather blog of Dr. Jeff Masters.
 

	The tropics are restless: Hurricane Hanna and Tropical Storm Ike
	Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 5:45pm

HANNA

We have an interesting situation with Hurricane Hanna. She flared up into a hurricane today, is currently meandering aimlessly in the general vicinity of the Bahamas... and could come ashore in central Florida with less than 48 hours notice if she starts moving again.

There's also a good chance she'll miss us completely. But it's hard to tell.

Hurricane computer models always have a difficult time with storms that are drifting aimlessly without any steering currents, like Hanna is doing right now. They'll take a stab at when the storm will start moving and which direction it will move in, but they frequently whiff. (See Tropical Storm Fay.) Right now, the computer models and the official forecast think she'll start moving again on Wednesday afternoon, but it could easily be tonight. Or Tuesday. Or Thursday. Or Friday. It all depends on when a new set of steering currents will come along to whisk Hanna away towards her final destination. Wednesday afternoon is the best educated guess the National Hurricane Center has, but they'll be the first to tell you not to rely on that as gospel truth.

As for Hanna's destination, the NHC is even more uncertain. The computer models are predicting landfalls ranging from Miami to Myrtle Beach and everywhere in between, so the NHC's forecast is splitting the difference and saying Savannah. But they're also telling everyone in Florida to watch carefully, because Hanna's path is gonna be very close to us, maybe like Hurricane David in 1979. And Hanna could get from where she is now to Brevard County in 48 hours easily and could start moving in our direction at literally any moment. If Hanna starts moving earlier than expected, we could have a short-fuse hurricane warning on our hands very quickly. And like David, Hanna won't have to make an actual landfall in Central Florida to cause us major problems.

But again, there's a good chance she'll miss us completely. See Hurricane Ophelia in 2005.

If Hanna does hit us, she won't be any stronger than a Category 2 hurricane thanks to the same wind shear that's been keeping Hanna so weak for so long. That's no cake-walk, but we've been through Cat-2s before: Brevard got Category 2-level winds from both Frances and Jeanne in 2004, so the damage would be similar: annoying, disruptive, damaging... but survivable. Recoverable. Hanna won't be our "big one."

Regardless, don't take Hanna lightly. Give serious consideration to hurricane-shopping today. At the very least keep a close watch on Hanna and be ready to run to the store the instant she makes her first move, since that first move could start a 48-hour countdown to hurricane-force winds in Brevard. And of course if you're still working on cleanup or repairs from Fay, get it wrapped up NOW.

And even if Hanna misses us... Tropical Storm Ike just formed today. I don't like Ike... the 5-day forecast calls for him to reach the Bahamas by this weekend, which would put him in striking-distance of Florida by this time next week. Oh, goody. And there's another tropical wave out there behind Ike that is expected to become Tropical Storm Josephine in the next couple of days.

As always, keep reading the excellent tropical weather blog by Dr. Jeff Masters. He's focusing on Hurricane Gustav right now for obvious reasons, but he's also doing updates on Hanna and Ike.

Speaking of Gustav... New Orleans isn't out of the woods yet. Right now, there are reports that the surge may have over-topped some levees, though there aren't any reports of actual full-blown levee breaches. Yet. Remember, it was a full day after Katrina before the world really knew how bad the levee breaches in New Orleans turned out to be, so we may not really know until Tuesday night whether or not New Orleans has weathered this storm. Keep praying for them.
 

	New site feature: Ex Post Facto
	Monday, September 1st, 2008 at 4:45pm

If I can please direct your attention to the menu bar along the right side of the screen, there are two new features of the site to let you know about. Those of you who read blogs regularly will get it immediately, but not everyone here reads blogs regularly, so I want to make sure nobody gets left out of the loop.

First of all, I've taken all of July's entries and moved them to their own Archive page, as well as cutting all of July's headlines out of the Recent Posts menu. This will help to de-clutter the Index page, which was getting quite large and was loading more slowly each day. Nothing's been deleted, just moved. It's all still there.

Second, I've added a new menu to the menu bar: Ex Post Facto. (You probably already know this, but I'll put on my Caption Obvious uniform and inform you that it's Latin for "after the fact.") In the past two months I've written a LOT on this site, but since this site is mainly dedicated to local news and current events, a lot of what I've written loses value at an alarming rate over time. For example, see anything I wrote about candidates who lost their 8/26 primary races. But every now and then I post something up here that is less about a current event and is more about a general topic, something that will still be about as useful and/or entertaining to read next year as it was on the day I wrote it. (Assuming that anything I write is useful and/or entertaining to begin with, of course, but hey, I'll assume so because my ego is just that big. Deal with it.)

(Two parenthetical asides in one paragraph. I'm sure that violates some tenet of formal writing somewhere. And that's why I'm a blogger and not a paid columnist.)

Anyway... posts listed under Ex Post Facto are in the latter category: stuff I didn't write recently but that you may still find useful and/or entertaining regardless of when I wrote it. Think of it as a Highlights section or a Best Of section, only it's called Ex Post Facto because it sounds cooler. That, and I'm totally punning on the word "Post." 'Coz it's a blog! And it has posts! Get it? Get it?

Oh, hell. You probably got it the instant you first saw the headline.
 

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