FRED KAGAN on Iraq as it is..

DISASTER PREPAREDNESS UPDATE:

Most people along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts haven’t made hurricane survival plans, despite pleas from emergency officials for residents to prepare before the season starts, according to a poll released Thursday. . . .

One forecaster said odds were high that a major hurricane would hit the U.S. this year.

Nevertheless, 53% of people surveyed in 18 Atlantic and Gulf Coast states say they don’t feel that they are vulnerable to a hurricane, or to related tornadoes and flooding, according to the Mason-Dixon poll. Eighty-eight percent said they had not taken any steps to fortify their homes.

Officials encourage a 3-day stock of food and water. That’s not really enough,”But 61% of poll respondents had no hurricane survival kit. Of those who did, 82% packed a fire hazard — candles or kerosene lamps. Missing from most of those kits were axes, which emergency officials recommended after many residents were trapped in their attics as they tried to escape the flooding following Hurricane Katrina.”

You should have at least a week’s worth of nonperishable food and medicine, and you should have a bag packed with essentials in case you have to evacuate. And that’s regardless of whether you live in a hurricane zone. More here. Also here.

And are candles bad? Judging by the picture, you need them for a proper hurricane meal presentation. Standards must be upheld!

EUROPE’S SHAME: This is pathetic.

RAND SIMBERG ON information war, and complicity in silence.

ANOTHER POSITIVE REVIEW for Evan Coyne Maloney’s documentary Indoctrinate U., from Linda Seebach in the Rocky Mountain News. Excerpt:

There’s a lovely Roger and Me scene in the film where Maloney is trying to interview a college president about incidents on his campus. (Maloney says Michael Moore inspired and encouraged him to start making documentaries.) He’s talking with a nervous administrator who can’t come up with any explanation about why the president’s office won’t return Maloney’s phone calls asking for an appointment, and keeps sidling away. Meanwhile an equally nervous secretary has called the cops.

While still looking for a distributor, the filmmakers are running a little viral marketing campaign. Visit the Web site, tell them where you’re from, and say you’d like to see the film. They promise to arrange local screenings whenever at least 500 people in an area have signed up. Why not Denver?

Read the whole thing. And if you like, visit the webpage and sign up.

MISSED IT BY THAT MUCH!

L.A. ANTIGUN ACTIVIST caught with illegal machine gun: “Note to LA government: be cautious about trusting a million bucks to a guy who goes by ‘Big Weasel.'”

THE STRAIGHT DOPE on disappearing bees.

STREET FIGHTING MEN in Iran.

BORDER SECURITY: “A globe-trotting Atlanta lawyer with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis was allowed back into the United States by a border inspector who disregarded a computer warning to stop him and don protective gear, officials said Thursday. . . . The unidentified inspector explained that he was not a doctor but that the infected man seemed perfectly healthy and that he thought the warning was merely ‘discretionary,’ officials briefed on the case told The Associated Press.” Feel safe now?

JEEZ, THAT WOULD MAKE ME WHAT, 29? Is 70 the new 50?

YET ANOTHER RECORD HIGH FOR STOCKS: I credit the Democratic Congress! Well, that and good economic news:

Investors found reason for optimism in a stronger-than-expected jobs report for May. Nonfarm payrolls rose by 157,000 last month, a larger increase than in April and more than analysts anticipated. The unemployment rate held steady at 4.5 percent, as forecast, according to the Labor Department report.

The economic picture appeared brighter still following a lower reading on inflation from the Commerce Department and data from the Institute for Supply Management’s May survey, which indicated that the manufacturing sector was strengthening.

Well, that all sounds good.

UPDATE: A reader emails:

It is not only the U.S. where stocks are hitting records highs but also most markets in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America too. Lost amongst the cacophony of the MSM is the fact that economically the world has never had it this good and as a result millons of people are being lifted out of abject poverty every year.

I am employed as an emerging markets fund manager and witness this first hand. Two weeks ago I was in Shanghai and had dinner at a restaurant called M on the Bund. The Bund is where the banks and trading houses built their headquarters during the last great boom in Shanghai in the 1920’s & 30’s. M has a roof terrace overlooking the Hangpu River which is the main waterway for the city. The whole evening I witnessed a procession of barges and other ships laden with coal, cement, oil etc. heading upstream full and downstream empty. Looking out I could see the lights of welders flicker from various construction sites (sites are active 24/7) throughout the city. Scenes like these are occuring throughout the developing world though most without the vigor of the Chinese. As a result the various local economies are booming as are their stock markets. It is interesting to note that the two areas where the markets aren’t hitting new highs are Russia and the Gulf. I wonder if that tells us something about the future direction of oil prices?

That’s interesting. It probably tells us more about the corrosive effect of bad governance.

BYPASSING HUGO CHAVEZ’S CENSORS, with YouTube:

An opposition Venezuelan television station whose broadcast license has not been renewed by the government is now turning to YouTube to get its message out after its transmitter was taken over by a state-run channel. Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian Revolution” has no time for media groups that criticize his government; Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) is now off the air, and another channel, Globovision, could be next, according to CNN.

RCTV journalists and producers have not been arrested or stopped from working, but their main link to the public has been removed. Rather than giving up, the station has turned to YouTube, where it now has its own channel for the show El Observador. A Colombian channel is also broadcasting RCTV content into Venezuela.

El Observador clips have been seen 175,000 times since May 28, and the channel is currently the most-subscribed channel of the week.

Heh.

TEN TIPS ON saving water. Useful if, like me, you’re laboring under a drought.

KERRY HOWLEY says that if you support free markets, you should support open borders.

ANOTHER CAMPAIGN BLOGGER GETS SOME SCRUTINY.

This will get less attention than Amanda Marcotte, though, since most people, upon hearing about Chris Dodd’s campaign blogger, will respond by saying “Chris Dodd is running for President?”

THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE AND CHILDREN, inspired by the movie Knocked Up.

CRUNCHING THE NUMBERS: John Wixted writes: “I’m looking forward to the day that I can bring you good news about civilian causalities in Iraq. Today is not that day.”

Plus this, on American troop casualties: “At this rate, 2007 will be more deadly for US troops than any previous year of the war. Casualties are still extremely low by historical standards, but not according to the new American standard according to which wars are fought in which no one gets hurt. The only good news continues to be that things are turning against al Qaeda in Iraq. Iraq might be a mess for a long time to come, but the chaos that al Qaeda deliberately created is, for the moment, not working out as they planned.” Read the whole thing.

FIGHT GLOBAL WARMING BY flying to the Virgin Islands at taxpayer expense!

I volunteer. We all have to do our share to save the planet!

A LOOK AT THE ASSOCIATED PRESS’S editorial priorities.

And read this post, too.

SO I SAW THIS LIST OF Father’s Day gift suggestions and while there’s nothing wrong with it, I wonder if anyone would post a list of Mother’s Day gift suggestions that consisted of things like vacuum cleaners, stoves, and mops. But tools and grills for dads are different, somehow. Why?

UPDATE: CaltechGirl says I’ve got the question backward: Why aren’t people giving moms cool power tools? Good question!

Of course, I’d have liked a new stove — instead I bought one for myself. And vacuum cleaners can be cool, especially the hovercraft kind. Heck, even some mops.

PESHMERGA WOMEN STEAL THE SHOW at Iraq security handover ceremony.

EVAN COYNE MALONEY emails that there’s been a phenomenal response to his new film Indoctrinate U. He’s been asking people to enter their zipcodes after watching the trailer, as a way of showing distributors that there’s a market:

The overall conversion rate is something like 25%, which is absolutely unheard of in any other media. Direct mailers would sell their firstborn for that kind of conversion. Sometime in the next week, we will break 20,000 signups. And that’s without spending a single dime promoting the site! If we get five times that–certainly feasible–I think distributors will have a hard time ignoring us.

I would think so. Anyway, if you haven’t done so, consider watching the trailer and entering your zip code. It’s a film that deserves a wider audience.

DELL NON-HELL: Reader Hazen Dempster emails:

I want to thank you for your various posts about Dell customer support and their in-home repair service. My wife’s Dell laptop died over the Memorial Day weekend — It’s several years old so I figured there was no way is still had any warranty left. I had it in the car to take it to a Geek Squad location when I remembered your posts and decided that I ought to at least check with Dell before paying someone to work on it. Well, I called Dell on Memorial Day night – they diagnosed the problem as a failed motherboard and told me that I was still eligible for in-home repair. The technician called me the next day (Tuesday) to let me know that he had the service order and would have the part on Wednesday. On Wednesday he called to say he had the part and to schedule a time to come out. He was willing to come out that afternoon, but that didn’t work for my wife so he came out Thursday morning, spent about 30 minutes working on it and it’s like new again. Total bill — $0. Will I buy another Dell? Uh, yeah!

As with the bad stories, your experience may differ. But my own experiences with Dell have been good.

UNREST IN MEXICO CITY.