SOME DISASTER-PREPARATION ADVICE FROM TEXAS, courtesy of reader Fernando Colina:

And in the good ole Houston, USA, in the aftermath of IKE, telephones, internet and cable TV were down, and cell phones were unreliable due the spike in traffic. The only means of communication that approached useful levels was SMS messaging and good ole AM/FM. Sometimes text messages would be delayed for minutes but they almost always got there. I’m putting my el-cheapo crank-up radio in a pedestal next to my cell phone. They kept us in touch and made us comfortable for 60 hours. And let’s not forget the car charger for our phone. Sure, a generator is great, a car-pluggable DC-AC inverted will do work for small appliances, but a lowly $20 battery charger plugged to your car 12V outlet will power your radios, phones, flashlights, even coffee makers can make the difference between terror and small comfort.

Yeah. I have a bunch of big uninterruptible power supply units for my computers, DSL modem, wi-fi, etc. These will keep the Internet going for days without power — so long as the Internet is up, of course — and also recharge gadgets like cellphones and laptops.

UPDATE: Reader Dale Britton writes: “Say, I wouldn’t mind owning one of those. And I’m thinking Amazon wouldn’t be depressed about selling a few dozen – errr, strike that – thousand of those, I’m sure. You’ll probably sell them 1,000 in Houston alone this week. Link your faves!”

I have several models — this one is the most recent, and features a mute button for the annoying power-off alarm. It’ll run a computer for a while, but it’ll run low-power devices like the DSL modem and router for days. However, since you have to, you know, charge it first, I don’t think it’ll help folks whose power is out now.

DEXTER FILKINS ON HOW MUCH IRAQ HAS IMPROVED. “When I left Baghdad two years ago, the nation’s social fabric seemed too shredded to ever come together again. The very worst had lost its power to shock. To return now is to be jarred in the oddest way possible: by the normal, by the pleasant, even by hope.”

Well, you know it has to have gotten much better, as the press has quit talking about it. Meanwhile, TigerHawk notes how much Filkins’ reporting echoes Michael Yon. And, if you missed it earlier, be sure to read this WSJ piece on why the Surge worked.

WHICH CHICAGO SCHOOL?

IN TEXAS, more than 800,000 remain without power in the wake of Hurricane Ike.

YESTERDAY it was a watch sale. Today, it’s a jewelry sale. Why all the markdowns? Is it because of the economic news?

SELF-OTHERIZING at the Obama campaign? With help from the press. “So if Americans think that Obama is somehow different from the average American, perhaps it is because Obama and his presumably well-meaning Leftist friends have been telling them that for nigh-on two years. You can hardly blame them if they’ve come to believe it.”

Related item here.

WHAT WOMEN WANT: From an expert! And, yeah, it’s getting harder and harder to tell satire from reality in this election.

60,000 PEOPLE SAW SARAH PALIN IN FLORIDA TODAY, but two of them blogged it. Here’s a report from Pereiraville, and here’s one from Baker Street. Lots of photos at both.

UPDATE: Here’s more from The Orlando Sentinel.

WHEN PUBLIC RACISM is perfectly acceptable.

FROM ARNOLD KLING, an open letter to Ben Bernanke:

We have excesses. Too many housing units. Too many “homeowners” who don’t have equity in their homes and never did. Too many banks and financial institutions. The excesses need to be worked out by the markets.

Henry Paulson is not the first strong Treasury Secretary to appear in a crisis. John Connally held that job in the Nixon Administration, In response to a run on the dollar, he abandoned the Bretton Woods agreement and introduced wage and price controls. In the short term, this was well received, and it allowed the economy to rebound in time for Nixon’s re-election. In the long run, it was a disaster, ultimately unleashing virulent inflation and, as oil prices rose, leading to the painful disorder of rationing and lines at gasoline stations.

Connally’s cure was worse than the disease. I strongly suspect that Paulson’s cure will prove similarly harmful.

I hope not.

READER FRANCES JENSEN emails that Amazon has discontinued its price-protection policy. That’s never been a big deal to me, but it matters to a lot of Amazon customers. I wonder what’s behind that change? Does Amazon expect a lot of price-drops in coming months? I would have bet on inflation myself, but they’re probably in a better position than me to forecast these things.

UPDATE: Reader Jay Dean writes: “Sometimes when a company gets big enough, in market share or otherwise, it doesn’t feel the need to keep up with all the extra bells and whistles that it needed to attract that market share to begin with. Could Amazon be the new doctor who dumps the girlfriend that stuck with him all the way through med school?” Gosh, I hope not.

WELL, JUNIOR ROTC WOULD BE BETTER, BUT. . . . Educating high-schoolers with America’s Army.

SARAH PALIN DRAWS 60,000 people in Florida.

LINING UP FOR GAS in Nashville. “People have panicked and there hasn’t really been a calming voice. Until this morning, most of the media (new and traditional) has exacerbated the problem.”

UPDATE: Atlanta, too. Part of the problem seems to involve people topping up tanks out of panic that gas will run out. If everyone does that, gas does run out, even if there’s no shortage to begin with.

Plus, praise for Phil Valentine.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bob Krumm emails: “It’s true that of the five gas stations I saw today, four were out of fuel and one had a line. However, if people would stop topping off their tanks when they have 5/8ths there wouldn’t be a problem. I figure that by the time I need gas, everyone else will have filled up. (I hope).”

And reader Mark McCarthy reports gas shortages in Asheville, N.C., too.

EXCITEMENT REIGNS with the all-new Zune 3.0. No, really: “The 3.0 update also introduces the new MixView music suggestion feature; which has been warmly received and even touted as being better than the Apple iTunes Genius offering.” Plus, a wi-fi tie-in with McDonald’s.

CALL THE COPS: A kid is climbing a tree!

MAY THE (CASIMIR) FORCE BE WITH YOU : DARPA Seeks to Use the Force, the Casimir Force.

THE CARNIVAL OF SPACE is up!

MICHAEL YON: Totally Wrong. “If NATO and the French persist in making these claims, the secret report, written by American Special Forces who were present, could find itself on the internet. Certain embargoed details in the report are even more troubling than the facts that were published in the Globe and Mail article. The loss of ten French soldiers is bad enough. Let’s not make it worse with cover-up.”

WILL CELLPHONES SAVE THE WORLD? “Here, you may use your phone for calls and messaging, perhaps for some computing lite, but likely little more. In Senegal, however, farmers are using phones to track crop prices, in Japan, writers are SMSing whole novels, and in Sweden, they’re texting to apply for instant loans. An app that lets you kill time on the subway, this is not. Within a year and a half, half the world will use cellphones, predict analysts, and with the bulk of new users emerging from developing nations, the question of what phones can do for their owners has never before had such potentially world-changing answers.”

PALIN HACKER UPDATE: FBI serves David Kernell with search warrant. (Via Gateway Pundit).

RICK MORAN: Live From Blogworld: The Political Blogosphere in Transition.

Here at the 2008 Blogworld and New Media Expo, there is plenty of evidence that rapid change in the blogosphere will alter the way that bloggers blog and the news consumer gets information.

The key is content. The way content is delivered, the way in which it is used by the blogger, and the way a blog community digests it and disseminates it further is driving the innovations in blogs, extending their influence, and ultimately changing the manner by which people get information

The growth of video, spurred on by YouTube and other video sites as well as blogging platforms that have become user friendly for uploading audio and video to a webpage have created nothing less than a revolution in blogging. In fact, the changes that occurring are so sweeping that the terms “blog” and “blogging” — at least the way those terms are generally understood now — may be anachronistic.

Of course, some of us have been predicting that for a while.

BEST OPENING SENTENCE EVER: “Groups of rogue MILF fighters are wandering around the south, looking for food, and fighting back when they encounter police or troops.” Really, it must have been a CIA mole who named the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

UPDATE: Reader James Egan writes: “Curious…the MILFs I’ve always encountered are very friendly.”

LAST OF THE Neanderthals.

CELEBRITY ACADEMICS on video.

AS OPPOSED TO THE USUAL CLOWN SHOW: “When things are serious enough, people want their leaders to be serious.”

YOU SAY YOU WANT A revolution? More here.

FACTCHECK.ORG: Obama’s Social Security Whopper. “He tells Social Security recipients their money would now be in the stock market under McCain’s plan. False.”

Scaring old people about Social Security. A new kind of politics? Seems pretty familiar to me . . . And, the latest problems notwithstanding, I’d still rather have my Social Security money in the stock market, so count this as a lie that would make me happier about McCain if it were true!

SARAH PALIN as Princess Diana with a rifle? Well, I like the rifle part, anyway . . . .

ERIC POSNER: “The legalists in American law schools rage at the Bush administration for claiming constitutional authority to wage the war on terrorism rather than going to Congress but are indifferent when the Bush administration cites, as authority to address the current financial crisis, a statute enacted by Congress seventy years ago and a judge-made doctrine that permits agencies to interpret ambiguous statutes expansively. Is it really so difficult to see that these two cases are the same from the perspective of the rule-of-law values that the rule of law is supposed to advance: public debate and authorization of policy by a representative body for the purpose of addressing events that it is actually aware of? I say that you have to approve of both or neither.”

Plus, an I-told-you-so from Gordon Smith.

UPDATE: A cheerful perspective on economic developments: “These are very good times for me, selling bottled alcohol at the retail level.” It’s all what you invest in, I guess . . . .

HERE’S THE PROPOSED BAILOUT LEGISLATION, and Fabius Maximus isn’t that happy with this provision:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Such provisions aren’t unprecedented, and have long been included in federal legislation where there’s concern that litigation might gum things up. They’re generally upheld by courts, though not so much where the claims are constitutional in nature. That’s not to say that it’s a good idea here, necessarily, just that it’s not some sort of unprecedented power-grab in and of itself.

UPDATE: Comments from David Zaring.

Has Treasury been delegated an unconstitutionally broad amount of power? This question always gets asked, and the answer to it is always no. . . . It’s that “without limitation” language – suggesting that the powers granted to Treasury are examples, rather than limited authorizations, that might give a nondelegation afficianado a little pause. You know, can Treasury take this new sovereign wealth fund and buy anything it likes? Isn’t that unconstitutionally broad? Maybe so …. but your first presumption is that broad grants of power haven’t been held to be unconstitutionally broad since 1935. I think this easily passes muster.

I agree, though I wish I didn’t. But read the whole thing.

PEOPLE ARE ABANDONING THEIR LANDLINES for cellphones. I’ll be one of the last to do that — for one thing, we need a landline for the podcasts. But I also value the greater clarity and reliability of landlines over cell service. They’re better in an emergency, and they’re better for a phone conversation that lasts more than 90 seconds.

That said, if I were still in the move-every-year phase of my 20s, I wouldn’t bother with a landline. Setting up phone service is one of the hassles of moving, and a cell number that stays the same makes it easier to stay in touch with your friends anyway.

NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: New tool for nanotechnology shows nanoscale changes as they happen.

IN THE MAIL: David Ignatius’ Body of Lies: A Novel. Despite the title, it’s not actually about media coverage in the 2008 election . . . .

YOUTUBE CENSORSHIP IN BRITAIN: Clearly, you can’t count on Google to champion free speech.

THOUGHTS ON POLITICIANS, Social Security, and raising the retirement age.

Plus, from Slate: Why is Obama editing his position on Social Security now? Also, “a drastic edit of his position on Internet privacy.”

UPDATE: Pension deficit disorder.

WHY THE SURGE worked.

HMM: Paulson to Stephanopoulos: Foreign Firms will be included in the Bailout. He means the U.S. operations of foreign-owned financial companies, though.

UPDATE: A financial-crisis Q&A from The Wall Street Journal.

ANOTHER UPDATE: “Almost Armageddon.”

ARNOLD KLING: “Without low-down-payment mortgages, you don’t get the housing bubble. The CEO of Freddie Mac, Richard Syron, got sacked. Good. Barney Frank, Syron’s chief sponsor, kept his job, and continues to push the idea of Freddie and Fannie taking their ‘profits’ and using them to fund low-down-payment mortgages. I’m sorry to keep harping on Congressman Frank. He didn’t cause the whole crisis, or if he did he didn’t mean to. It’s just that markets learn from their mistakes, and he doesn’t.”

And read this post, too.

THANKS FOR ALL THOSE “HOW ‘BOUT THEM VOLS” EMAILS. Yeah, yesterday sucked. But a bigger blow is that my friend Doug Weinstein — whose blood has always run deep orange — didn’t even bother to go to the game. He’s mad about high ticket prices, fan exploitation, and commercialization, and says he’s given up on Tennessee football because it’s like a pro team now, and he doesn’t care much about pro teams. This is more or less like the Pope becoming an agnostic.

UPDATE: This is how bad it’s gotten . . . .

SEBASTIAN MALLABY doesn’t approve of the bailout plan. “The plan is being marketed under false pretenses. Supporters have invoked the shining success of the Resolution Trust Corporation as justification and precedent. But the RTC, which was created in 1989 to clean up the wreckage of the savings-and-loan crisis, bears little resemblance to what is being contemplated now. The RTC collected and eventually sold off loans made by thrifts that had gone bust. The administration proposes to buy up bad loans before the lenders go bust. This difference raises several questions. . . . Taking bad loans off the shoulders of the banks seems like a merciful rescue; ordering banks to raise capital or buying equity stakes in them sounds like big-government meddling. But we are in the midst of a crisis, and it shouldn’t matter how things sound. The Treasury plan outlined on Friday involves vast risks to taxpayers, huge complexity and no guarantee of success. There are better ways forward.”

DANIEL GROSS WANTS more subprime loans, now!

SO THERE: Obama’s “Got A Problem” If He Tries to Take Biden’s Guns.

Funny, Biden’s NRA “F” rating kept me from realizing what a bitter gun-clinger he actually is . . . .

OBAMA’S DEMOCRAT PROBLEM:

You just knew that when Joe O’Connell, former head of the local AFL-CIO, got on stage here with John McCain and Sarah Palin things were not going smoothly for the Obama campaign among union voters.

“I am a lifelong Democrat, an intelligent Democrat, who is supporting John McCain,” O’Connell said last week as a crowd of 7,000 waved “Another Democrat for John McCain” signs and roared its approval.

I had no idea that racism was so rampant within the Democratic Party.

THIS IS NOT GOOD NEWS: First Chinese Carrier Aviators: “China announced that its first class of carrier aviators had begun training at the Dalian Naval Academy. The naval officers will undergo a four year course of instruction to turn them into fighter pilots capable of operating off a carrier. China already has an airfield, in the shape of a carrier deck, built at an inland facility. The Russians have warned China that it may take them a decade or more to develop the knowledge and skills needed to efficiently run an aircraft carrier. The Chinese are game, and are slogging forward.”

UPDATE: A cheerier picture from Jerome Cole.

YEAH, PEOPLE KEEP SENDING ME THIS BIDEN EMAIL, TOO. Sorry, I don’t believe it.

FACTCHECK.ORG: An Obama-Biden ad says McCain supports “cutting benefits in half” for Social Security recipients. False! As much as they’ve complained about McCain’s ads, it seems there’s plenty of falsity to go around . . . .

BILL QUICK: “I like cowboys. They are one of the greatest American icons. Why do Obama and Biden hate America and her greatest icons?”

DOG BITES MAN: Rosenberg sons acknowledge dad was spy.

IMAGERY: Biden “is a distinctive blend of pit bull and odd duck whose weak filters make him capable of blurting out pretty much anything.” I love the photoshop that results.

ADVICE TO JOURNALISTS: “Reporters, if you want to be an advocate, do both yourself and journalism a favor. Leave. Go to Madison Avenue. The pay’s better.”

HMM: Rev. Jackson seeks ban on Wall St. campaign money. “The Rev. Jesse Jackson called on Congress Saturday to ban campaign contributions from major financial institutions for members of financial oversight committees.” (Via Newsalert, which comments: “No word yet on whether Jesse Jackson feels guilty about taking money from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Also no word yet on whether Jesse Jackson is giving back Enron money.” Hey, he can’t be corrupted by their cash. It’s too late for that!)

STEPHEN GREEN is in fanboy heaven.

IS THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES manufacturing white racists to advance its preferred election narrative?

SOME ECONOMIC FIGURES FROM DRUDGE: “DOW UP 40 POINTS IN PAST MONTH… UP 18% PAST 5 YEARS… UP 44% PAST 10 YEARS…”

INSPIRED BY JOE BIDEN, TigerHawk looks at more new forms of patriotism:

More fundamentally, are you basically a load? Do you sit around in a beanbag chair eating chips all afternoon, or burn up your days watching Oprah? Stop wasting your time on stupid stuff! Improve the country, or at least improve yourself. Read a book, clean up your front yard, wash your car, pull your money out of mortage-backed securities, whatever. All of those things, except maybe the last, are patriotic!

Read the whole thing.

SARAH’S SURPRISE: Palin to meet world leaders at U.N. next week.

OBAMA ON MILITARY POLICY:

HOW COMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES are preparing for a pandemic. Well, I’m glad that they are. But I’m currently reading John Ringo’s latest, which is about an outbreak of bird flu in a “year without a summer” — and now I see the above, and am waiting for the NASA press conference on solar cooling on Tuesday, and, well, I don’t want things to get any more realistic. I mean, even Fallen Angels doesn’t have a pandemic and an ice age.

As I recall, though, Ringo had the same feeling a little while ago. All full of carrots and apples, he is . . . .

I DON’T REMEMBER EVER SEEING SO MUCH criticism of Howard Kurtz in previous election cycles, except, you know, from Mickey Kaus.

HAS THE FED BEEN bailing out foreign banks, too?

LOOKING AT THE FINANCIAL BAILOUT, with Tom Maguire and Kevin Drum. And here’s a WSJ story.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: “OK, we’ll say it if no one else will: Thank heaven for Gramm-Leach-Bliley. If you’ve been listening to the fulminations from Congress and the campaign trail, you know that we’re talking about the 1999 law that dismantled the Depression-era barriers between commercial and investment banking. Democrats largely supported it at the time, and one of their own, Bill Clinton, signed it. Now they frame it as a Republican bill that helped send the nation on the path to perdition.” But according to IBD it made this week’s rescues possible: “By taking down an outmoded firewall, the law is helping the financial industry cope with a once-in-a-lifetime crisis. Far from being the cause, this instance of deregulation, or whatever you call it, is part of the cure.”

UPDATE: Tyler Cowen is on this, too:

Did the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act cause the housing bubble?

No. That is one common myth among the progressive left. Because it involves financial deregulation and the unpopular Phil Gramm, the Act is vilified and assumed to be part of a broader chain of evil events. Here are some of the articles which promulgate the myth that the Act caused or helped cause the housing bubble. One version of the claim originates with Robert Kuttner, but if you read his article (and the others) you’ll see there’s not much to the charge. Kuttner doesn’t do more than paint the Act as part of the general trend of allowing financial conflicts of interest.

Most of all, the Act enabled financial diversification and thus it paved the way for a number of mergers. Citigroup became what it is today, for instance, because of the Act. Add Shearson and Primerica to the list. So far in the crisis times the diversification has done considerably more good than harm. Most importantly, GLB made it possible for JP Morgan to buy Bear Stearns and for Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch. It’s why Wachovia can consider a bid for Morgan Stanley. Wince all you want, but the reality is that we all owe a big thanks to Phil Gramm and others for pushing this legislation. Brad DeLong recognizes this and hail to him. Megan McArdle also exonerates the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Read the whole thing. Plus, from the comments: “The majority of left-wing blogs are absolutely loving the financial crisis. It’s the rapture of the marxists.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: A different take from Ed Cone, who cites this article by Alan Sloan.

ADVICE ON staying safe in your garage.

CAR LUST: The thrills of a Yugo.

MAHMOUD’S NUCLEAR ADVENTURES: Some Ahmadinejad cartoons.

KILLER DRONES that can see through walls?

FROM FRANK J.: A Modest Proposal for Training Future Presidents.

FILM CRITICS AND HOLLYWOOD: giving terrorists a pass, as usual.

HOW BAD WERE THINGS LAST WEEK? This bad.

THE COLOSSAL SQUID: A photo gallery.

REX MURPHY: The Incredible Shrinking Obama. If he’s getting this kind of coverage in Canada, it’s probably a bad sign. Meanwhile, reader C.J. Burch emails: “Panic is an emotional state. Can’t be measured by stats. Maybe there is no reason at all for Obama and the media to panic, still looks like they have. Doesn’t it?”

Yeah, it does.

OUCH: “The McCain camp calls out — by name — another reporter (this one from TIME) and goes to far as to quote her snide response when provided with information which contradicts her storyline.”

THABO MBEKI agrees to resign. I don’t know much about the particular circumstances that led to this, but it’s hard to see him as much of a loss. On the other hand, it’s far from clear that his successor will be an improvement.

BITES FROM THE APPLE: A roundup of Apple computer news, including how to get HDTV on Apple TV.

THE CARNIVAL OF CARS is up!

CHILLING EFFECT:

A new study has found that doctors are rarely criminally prosecuted or sanctioned in connection with the prescribing of narcotic painkillers. The study, published this month in the journal Pain Medicine, found that 725 doctors, or about 0.1 percent of practicing physicians, had been prosecuted or sanctioned by state medical boards between 1998 and 2006 on charges arising from illegally or improperly prescribing narcotics. Of that group, 25 doctors specialized in pain treatment.

“The widely publicized chilling effect of physician prosecution on physicians concerned with legal scrutiny over prescribing opioids appears disproportionate to the relatively few cases,” the study reported.

Well, it doesn’t take very many prosecutions to create a chilling effect, something that the criminal law relies upon, of course. This is why it’s important to keep a close eye on prosecutors.

AT AMAZON a big sale on men’s watches. This one’s almost 90% off, which is pretty impressive since it started at nearly $1600. I ordered one myself, to get ahead on my Christmas shopping.

UPDATE: Reader Jon Ravin emails about the 90% off watch:

Why buy obsolete and fundamentally inaccurate (compared to electronic watches) devices, when for less than you paid you could have a nice modern watch???

I thought you were more a technology freak than that!

My response: It depends on how much you’re worried about the electromagnetic pulse . . . . Looks like I ordered mine just in time, though!

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Stephen Borchert writes: “I’m glad I ordered one when I did, as I was surprised that they were still available after you posted the link. Thanks for the heads-up. I have an Invicta automatic and they’re the poor man’s Rolex.”

MICHAEL YON on French deaths in Afghanistan.

I NEVER KNEW that the Democratic Party was such a hotbed of racism. Thank goodness I left them for the Libertarians, back in ’94.

UPDATE: Reader Scott Karns writes: “Am I a racist if I don’t vote for Obama because he’s a lawyer? ;)” Speaking as a lawyer, I’d say yes, yes you are, Scott. And you should be deeply ashamed.

TEETHING PROBLEMS at the Large Hadron Collider.

DR. MELISSA CLOUTHIER on surviving Hurricane Ike.

AT REASON, thoughts on taxes and patriotism.

MORE ANTI-PALIN THUGGISHNESS from Democratic operatives.

More here and here.

UPDATE: TigerHawk: “Whether Barack Obama can be said to be ‘good for the Jews’ is too portentous a question even for this blog. It is now safe to say, however, that his campaign is not.”

DAVID WEIGEL: Obama’s Wars: Liberal Interventionism Makes a Comeback. “Obama believes all of what he said six years ago in Chicago. He has called for, or retroactively endorsed, interventions in Zimbabwe, Pakistan, and Sudan. He has advocated a humanitarian-based foreign policy for his entire public career. Since coming to the U.S. Senate in 2005, he has built up a brain trust of academics and ex-Clintonites who, like him, challenge the logic of the Iraq war but not the logic of wars like Iraq. John McCain looks at American military power and sees a way to ‘roll back’ rogue states. Obama looks at American military power and sees a way to solve international and intranational conflict, regardless of the conflict’s immediate impact on national security. McCain seeks to aggressively confront imminent threats. Obama wants to do the same, while forestalling threats of tomorrow with just as much military vigor.” Hmm.

THE REPUBLICANS’ SECRET WEAPON: Lefty trolls.

MORE EVIDENCE THAT I’M NOT A CONSERVATIVE: I have very little in the way of a startle reflex. But, then, in high school some people called me “Spock.” Which was highly illogical, as that was not my name, and I have no Vulcan ancestry.

ADVICE: Don’t count COBOL out. Ugh. I used to program in COBOL, and I agree with this statement: “The use of Cobol cripples the mind; its teaching should, therefore, be regarded as a criminal offense.” Fortran was better, and I’m sure that newer languages are better still. Anything would be! And yet, we’re told, “Cobol is the most widely used language in the 21st century, critical to some of the hottest areas of software development today, and may be the next language you’ll be learning.” Not me. I’ve learned it and forgotten it, and the latter process was far more pleasant than the former . . . .

UPDATE: Cobol is worsening California’s budget crisis:

If Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to issue minimum-wage checks to 200,000 state workers in less than a month, he may want to rehire any semi-retired computer programmers he terminated last week.

The massive pay cut would exhaust the state’s antiquated payroll system, which is built on a Vietnam-era computer language so outdated that many college students don’t even bother to learn it anymore.

Democratic state Controller John Chiang said Monday it would take at least six months to reconfigure the state’s payroll system to issue blanket checks at the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour, though Schwarzenegger insists such a change should occur this month. . . . The state payroll system is based on the COBOL, or Common Business Oriented Language, programming language – a code first introduced in 1959 and popularized in the 1960s and 1970s.

“COBOL programmers are hard to come by these days,” said Fred Forrer, the Sacramento-based CEO of MGT of America, a public-sector consulting firm. “It’s certainly not a language that is taught. Oftentimes, you have to rely on retired annuitants to come back and help maintain the system until you’re able to find a replacement.”

I’ll bet if he’d ordered a raise we wouldn’t be hearing this excuse — but either way, it’s more evidence that Cobol is a tool of the Devil! Thanks to reader Lou Minatti for the tip.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Bill Richmond emails: “In my experience, people that criticize COBOL never actually made a living with it.” Well, I certainly never did. Which is a good thing for . . . well, everybody!

MORE: Reader David Block writes:

I guess you just wish that 51 year old COBOL programmers like myself be unemployed. I’m too young to retire, and with kids in college that’s not practical to do anyway. I’d rather keep doing SOME work on what I like and am good at than go off and do something that I’m no good at.

Me, I would much prefer PL/I.

Hey, I don’t want you unemployed. Quite the contrary — better you than me! And reader Jeff Gould emails:

The surprising survival of Cobol has nothing to do with the qualities of the language itself. It is due only to the fact that many large IBM mainframe applications still in use today were written in this language. These big mainframe apps were written 20 or 30 years ago to run on IBM’s proprietary mainframe software (operating systems like MVS, “middleware” like CICS and IMS, etc). In most cases it is not technically feasible to rewrite them to run on another operating system such as Linux. And it would be prohibitively expensive to recreate them from scratch in another language like Java. IBM estimates that 200 billion lines of Cobol are running on the remaining 10,000 mainframes in the world with a cumulative value of $5 trillion ($25 bucks a line)!

So people keep this old Cobol stuff alive because it usually doesn’t make financial sense to replace it with something new. They don’t care a hoot about the language itself. When they can replace it they do. Case in point: the State of California payroll app you mentioned is being replaced by a multi-million dollar package from German software giant SAP. This particular Cobol app has become a political football lately because the California Controller (a partisan Democrat with future gubernatorial ambitions) used it as an excuse for not complying with Schwarzenegger’s emergency order to cut state worker wages to the Federal minimum until the Legislature voted a new budget in (which they have now done).

Since IBM needs to keep mainframe revenues flowing (according to analyst estimates the mainframe still accounts for 40% of IBM profits), they have come up with all sorts of clever ways to get people to move non-Cobol apps onto their mainframes. For example, they practice differential pricing on their mainframe CPUs depending on what language the apps run in. Each System z mainframe has a number of CPUs (a modern microprocessor similar in design but not identical to IBM’s Power chip). If you want to run a Cobol app on a particular CPU, you pay a small fortune. If you want to run just Java, it costs a fraction of the price (but then IBM tweaks the chip’s microcode to prevent it from running Cobol).

Back in the 90s and earlier you could buy “plug compatible mainframes” from competing vendors like Amdahl. But in 2000 IBM launched their new 64 bit architecture (System z) and then in 2001 in the Department of Justice killed the longstanding Consent Decree that obliged IBM to license its software to competitors. So now IBM owns 99.8% of the market and is squeezing it for every cent they can get (I confess I would be tempted to do the same if I were in their shoes). They really need Cobol to survive, because the non-portability of those old apps is what allows them to charge millions for hardware that would only cost tens of thousands if it was running Linux.

He’s got a related post — on do-it-yourself mainframes — on his blog. And reader John Allison writes:

Strangely enough, pretty much all the major employers in this neck o’the woods are still operating on systems running COBOL. It’s paid for, it works, and the employees know how to work with it. It was the primary language taught for the CIS program at my alma mater in ’98-’00, and may still be for all I know. The CS majors all looked down their noses at it, but if you wanted to work anywhere in town outside the CS department at the university you’d best know and love COBOL. I have a strong suspicion that my current employer still relies on COBOL (that’d be the IRS). The analysts and other assorted geeks really want to make it go away and have been trying to do so for some time but the system is so large and convoluted that it just isn’t happening.

You want to be careful what you buy up front, because chances are you’ll be stuck with it a lot longer than you think. . .

TOM MAGUIRE SUGGESTS that I was too quick to believe ABC News on the Taheri story. “At this point the McCain camp has over-reached a bit and the Obama camp has enough cover and confusion that their press allies will declare this round for Obama. The truth is more complicated, of course – we can find lies and deceit on the Obama side that more than match the confusion on the McCain side.” That’s me — gullible believer in the Mainstream Media!

HOW TO CAMPAIGN in a financial crisis. Plus, a Wall Street analogy from Roger Kimball. But do the numbers support his analysis?

MORE CLAIMS OF voter fraud by ACORN.

Shouldn’t they be investigated by the Justice Department? Or am I dreaming here?

MEGAN MCARDLE: “Every time there’s a financial crisis, demagogues start criticising the short-sellers. . . . Successful shorts, like George Soros’ spectacular attack on the British pound, usually work because there is a real underlying issue (in that case, the British pound’s unsustainable peg to other EU currencies). If there’s no problem there, the shorts take a big bath. . . . Perhaps most importantly, while short selling is a problem for Morgan Stanley, and his shareholders, it is not the primary problem in this crisis. The problem is in the debt markets, not the equity markets: financial firms are finding it very, very difficult to roll over their paper. (More on this later). The ban on short-selling does nothing to combat this problem, and indeed, by shaking public confidence in the stock price, might push investors into being more conservative on the debt than they otherwise would be.”

THE TOP FIVE REASONS your tires fail. “Maintenance on your tires should command as much respect, if not more, than on all the other parts and systems of your car. Trouble is, most drivers just don’t think about the condition of their tires.”

TIME TO BUY STOCKS? “A year or two from now, I have little doubt you’ll be glad you bought during this tumultuous time.” I certainly hope that’s right.

L.A. TIMES: Obama votes ‘Present’ on new economic rescue plan for now. Decisive leadership for the 21st Century!

ANOTHER political hack attack.

IOWAHAWK: Stomping Home a Message of Hope!

MORE ON THE HURRICANE IKE AFTERMATH: Here’s some USGS aerial photography. And here are some pics on hurricane damage at the Galveston Railroad Museum. Plus, here’s a photo slideshow of damage.

Houstonian Steven Selbe emails: “Not to pat ourselves on the back (I’m a Houstonian), but, unlike Katrina, we aren’t standing around asking ‘where’s the government to fix everything.’ I would say power is back to about 50% of the area, gas was short but is getting better. We all helped each other to clean up (there is a lot of big debris to be picked up but we are patient) and now having taken the punch Houston is getting back to work (I have been back at work for 3 days despite no power at home).”

And reader David Whidden writes:

I saw that you linked to an old Galveston Daily News article that a reader sent you, but unfortunately it is already out of date. As this article from yesterday indicates, that media blackout has already been rescinded. It turns out that the mayor was actually just really busy and decided that her time was better spent elsewhere. Compare her actions to Ray Nagin and his hour long interview on NPR – which one was really serving their city more effectively?

Since Monday they’ve already restored water to all of the areas behind the Seawall (an 11 mile stretch) and a phased return will be started next week.

Maybe the reason there isn’t much news out of Galveston is that there is a functional city government down there that is making responsible choices, albeit with an occasional mistake, and doing everything they can to get their city up and going again. Life is going to be rough there for a while, but in comparison to the clowns who were in charge in New Orleans, the people of Galveston have done a remarkable job so far. They aren’t whining about what their problems are, they are just solving the problems. And, if they can solve their problems on their own, why would the press write about that?

Yeah, that’s no fun. Reader Daniel Kauffmann writes:

Regarding the lesser coverage of Ike vs. Katrina:

First note that I am a former New Orleans resident. I left in 1991, in part because it was apparent that in the event of the eventual natural disaster, evacuation would not be possible on the short notice that hurricanes give; in part because of the glaring ineptness of the City of New Orleans to deal with routine crime, civic, and economic needs – much less a major problem; and in part because of the mindset of about half of the New Orleans populace, “I have a problem and you must help me.”

I currently reside in the countryside an hour north of Houston. Many of the folks that I work with commute from Houston or points in between. Most of us have been dealing without power (and water if on a well, such as I). One coworker had a large oak tree come through her roof, another had three large oaks that totally demolished her home. Of the hundred or more persons I’ve spoken to since Ike came through, one, ONLY one, has said anything about FEMA or the government having any responsibility to help.

The difference is that simple, Ike is not newsworthy because there are no clamoring masses demanding assistance (and blaming Bush because it wasn’t here yesterday). Folks hereabouts wear boots. Boots have bootstraps, and we know how to use them. Ike has been awful. We’ve simply chosen to deal with it. We are extremely grateful for any and all assistance, but recognize that it is our problem, not that of others.

And reader Anthony Dye offers a similar explanation for the low-key coverage:

My theory: It’s because the Republican Governor has handled the response fantastically. Yes there are shortages here and there, but he learned lessons from Rita and put them into practice. In other words, the disaster is bad news but the response has been a positive for the people affected, for a Red State, and for the Texas GOP. They’re showing what “compassionate conservatism” was supposed to look like, and nobody in the media wants to make a Republican look good right now.

The view from Austin, TX is that everyone is doing everything humanly possible to help, and largely succeeding in delivering that help – even to the thousands of imbeciles who stayed through the storm and had to be evacuated afterwards.

Imbeciles, indeed.

UPDATE: A pack, not a herd. Reader Brandon Haber writes:

More from a Houston resident – I work for Johnson Space Center. A few other NASA folks put together a list of volunteers and people in need, and down here, lots of people had a foot or more of water in their house. They’ve organized roving bands of 8-12 of us, going around to houses and tearing down walls, removing carpet, cutting down trees, you name it. We’ve probably done more for people than FEMA, all organized on the spur of the moment. My hats off to the rest of the volunteers, and many others like them. I’m new to Houston, and the amazing citizen’s response to Ike has just reaffirmed why I love living here. The damage is staggering, but then, so is the spirit of this great city.

That’s how it should work.

GAS SHORTAGES IN NASHVILLE: “As prices have stabilized elsewhere in Tennessee, least 85 percent of the gas stations in the Nashville area were without gasoline early Friday, according to AAA estimates.” Prices in Knoxville, on the other hand, where shortages struck last weekend and then abated, have now plummeted. It’s like there’s some relationship between supply, demand, and price. Somebody research this, quick!

RUPERT MURDOCH: Obama’s economic policies are ‘naive’.