WHITHER WILMA, DELAY CAMPAIGN PHOTO, DAM DAM, NYT COLUMNS FREE, BREAKING CHINA IN SPACE

Fri. 9am HURRICANE WILMA, the third hurricane (Stan, Emily) to bash the Yucatan this year, is poised to devastate Cancun with the northeast quadrant of a 150 mph killer, and to listen to moron newscasters- the good news is that it's about to stall over a city of 2 million people... which will give Florida a little more time. It is just hammering Cozumel Is. (the single best scuba place in world) as we speak, but the artificial tourist city of Cancun, thrown up in a generation from a little fishing village, is loaded with bright gleaming substandard hotel skyscrapers, and loads of flimsy worker tenements on the fringes, that could be flattened by a major blow. This is good news to Amerocentric newscasters, who eagerly would prefer 20 times more Mexicans to die- Cancun is barely mentioned.

Called scuba + hotel people, and friends in Playa, Cozumel, and Cancun (where I was cave diving for 3 mo. last year); and should have some news tomorrow. Most of tourists in hotels in the 10x20 mile rectangular barrier island/lagoon hotel zone have been evacuated to the central city (which many tourists never see), according to the Hyatt Regency, at the northeast tip of the rectangle: Punta Cancun. I snorkled in very rough rocky shallow seas there and followed a V shaped flight of yard wide spotted rays that exhibited the greatest intelligence I've ever seen in the ocean- you could almost hear the leader's squawked commands to the other members of his squad.

This is a strange hurricane: no eye, two eyes, off center rotation, semi-transparent to radar pics, slow and jerky- I think it's going to surprise people, although the weather service is so good at predicting exact tracks, I suspect they've made a deal with the devil. Speak of which, there is something demonic about a tropical storm growing in one day to the strongest hurricane EVER. Wouldn't it be a terrible twist if it veers NW and slams NOLA again; they might just give up and abandon the whole below sea level city for good.

Half of the West and South coasts of Fla. are evacuating in panic, but they should wait- there's plenty of time to see where this thing is going- like in Rita, some may flee into the path of the wanton Wilma.

DELAY CAMPAIGN BOOKING PHOTO: I'm thinking that the grinning radiant Tom Delay Houston police booking photo without numbers looks like a campaign photo because.... it is a campaign photo. Somehow the weasel persuaded the politzei to accept a proffered photo to spare the exterminating poll further embarrassment. It is Texas, and roachmaster Tommy has a plethora of pull.

Liberals are in a tizzy about upcoming Plamegate indictments, but don't expect such wishful nonsense as exposing the faked Niger uranium pics- some of the semi-treason that got us into this disastrous war. Unless Fitz is totally co-opted, the wheels are coming off the foul slush wagon that Repubs have used to plunder, disgrace, and deceive the republic. Like that Philly protest organizer psycho who murdered his girlfriend and then packed her into a trunk in his closet for a year, the body (of massive Admin crimes) now can be smelled from the street, and if these honchos are taken down, there are legions of disgusted patriotic middle and lower level government people who will turn on the Bushistas in a flash. In a 1999 speech to the CIA, George Bush 1 said he had "nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.” (Watch him say it.) Some say BushCo is rife with feuds, with Rove and Card at each other's throats and our AWOL Haliburton Veep disgusted with bailing out GB2's screwups. Has any VEEP disappeared for longer than the Dick Cheney, except for a cameo to suck the marrow out of Katrina victims?

TAUNTON TAUNTINGS:
The ancient disintegrating 173 year old wooden dam has been leaking from numerous places as the little pond-river system of the closed Whittenton Mill, swollen to record heights, threatens to release a 6-7 ft wall of water straight into the semi-evacuated downtown. 20 mi. to the east of Providence, it is more RI suburb than Mass. First, how can a wooden dam last 2 centuries, even made with water resistant tropical woods, it's amazing. My Yankee ancestors (oh yeah, I'm a Kraut) built things to last: the huge brick mill complex where I once concocted agar-agar batches for biological medium that just burned down in yet another massive arson inferno, was ten years older, made when the frontier was Ohio! They've been pumping water out of the Pond, but 3 more days of rain (after 2 weeks + 11" of straight rain till last weekend- 8.3" in 2 days) are projected over weekend. Notice that lately, the whole world has been concerned with wild water. Could it be, oh, global warming?

NYT COLUMNISTS FREE:
For those of you jonesing on missing your daily dose of pure Bush hatred, the NYT columnists can still be found free of the greedy fools $8/month fee at http://www.johntabin.com/neverpayretail/ (many from Truthout.org). They are doing what the record industry did for 30 years- perversely overpricing their product out of reach ($18 for a $1 CD). Let's see- I buy the paper about twice a week, so if I was regularly buying the whole NYT, I'd spend about $8 a month for it. They want to charge that for online viewing of the lousy columnists alone, convinced that the addiction is strong enough to bring in big bucks. This is abuse of addicts, and brutal towards the billion or 2 second and third worlders who have as much ability to pay that as they do to telephone America at $2/minute from their crummy state monopoly phone co.

BREAKING CHINA IN SPACE
China just orbited it's second astronaut in space, and there is something distinctly creepy in the besuited spacyman leading people in a miked Maoist patriotic cheer before hopping his chariot to the stars. Read the stunning CHINA INC., which details how China is on track to kick our ass in everything- cars, computers, chips (well we'll still have food) in only 10 years, while we waste energy and passion on (non) Intelligent Design, a battle won a century ago. God, am I sick of hearing what the religious nuts will insist on. Liberals need to get together and drive these retards from school boards with pitchforks, if necessary.

Here's a prediction you should write down: to display their arrival to the world in the 2008 Olympics, China will land a man on the moon. Impossible, you say? Not really- many of their buildings, freeways, factories use top flight technology that would stun us, the Lunar flight pattern was laid out 40 years ago, they could buy the boosters and much else from Russia, and if it all goes wrong (50%), the 30 cent/hour average space workers (OK, maybe they get more) might have a glorious one-way trip. They could probably clamp down and fake a successful return.
Chinese Man on the Moon Far off
2005-12-30 8:07:13 CRIENGLISH.com
A one-year lunar fly-by mission may start in April 2007 in China, but a manned flight to the Earth's neighbour may be a long way away, a chief lunar exploration scientist said Thursday. "Sending a man to the Moon? It would be a one-way ticket if we do it now, given the thrust of our rockets at present is not strong enough," Luan Enjie, commander-in-chief of the country's lunar exploration programme, said jokingly.

Speak of which, after Yahoo China helped indentify a Chinese journalist's NYC website gossip posting about some Chinese official, he was sentenced to ten years in prison. We badly need a federal law to prevent US corporations from collaborating with this kind of brutal repression. A new book, Mao: The Unknown Story exposes the "worst ever" crimes and butchery of Mao and the Chicoms, who dismissed the 30 million dead in the Great Leap Forward ('58-61) as a incidental cost.