First, my apologies that this took so long.  It shouldn't have.  Anyhow, here it is.

This is copied in full from Circle's diary .  Being on dialup, I had nothing better to add.  I just wanted to keep this alive. Again, apologies to Circle.  

So. I drove back through Anderson Valley, yesterday, through Boonville, and into Sonoma County, through Cloverdale south to Rohnert Park where I had an interview at KRCB, a Sonoma county NPR station. Otherwise, I wouldn't have made the drive. The smoke would have kept me in.  Air pollution is two to three times the amount considered safe by federal standards.

"All of Northern California is being impacted by severely degraded air quality," said Lake County health officer Karen Tait. "Residents should be prepared to stay indoors and avoid vigorous physical activity."

So. I drove back through Anderson Valley, yesterday, through Boonville, and into Sonoma County, through Cloverdale south to Rohnert Park where I had an interview at KRCB, a Sonoma county NPR station. Otherwise, I wouldn't have made the drive. The smoke would have kept me in. Air pollution is two to three times the amount considered safe by federal standards.

"All of Northern California is being impacted by severely degraded air quality," said Lake County health officer Karen Tait. "Residents should be prepared to stay indoors and avoid vigorous physical activity."

"The worst flooding Cedar Rapids has ever seen."  That's how the morning talk show host on 600 WMT-AM just described the devastation.  Make no mistake - this is a flood of epic proportions.  Nothing like this has been seen in Eastern Iowa in recorded history.

To give some perspective on just how bad it is, here are the river crests for the previous big floods:

Previous record flood in 1929:  20 feet
The Flood of 1993: 19.3 feet
Current river level in downtown Cedar Rapids: ~30 feet and still rising

The Washington Post is rightfully attacking China's refusal to allow international experts into Sichuan to help in relief experts, arguing correctly that such refusal not only endangers its own citizens, but provides ideological shelter for the Burmese Junta's similar approach to Monsoon relief:

Yet China is contributing to the mounting man-made disaster in Burma even as it rescues its own citizens. The communist government has adopted the position that it will welcome international aid for earthquake victims, but not foreign aid workers -- the same xenophobic stance that Burma's military junta has taken...

More below the fold...

Not everything is the Bush White House's fault.

Not everything.  

In this case, not fully their fault, but the contrast is too striking to go without comment.

The White House sent Laura Bush out to speak on the disastrous cyclone in Myanmar. She gave a prepared statement. And, then she took questions. And, the press had their chance to ask questions. Some were quite serious, quite on target.

But, toward the end the questions strayed to issues closer to Laura's heart. MSNBC, however, took a little time to pick up the shift of subject as you can see over at Huffington Post.  One side of the screen, disaster scenes from Myanmar/Burma, the other a laughing Laura chatting about Jenna's wedding.

Sigh ...

Another stain on America's image?

Matins. Lauds. Prime. Terce. Sext. Nones. Vespers. Compline.  Eight times a day, people all over the world stop to chant or pray the Liturgy of the Hours.  "Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall proclaim your praise," begins Matins, sung in the wee, still-dark hours of the morning.  But the other Offices -- the Offices that punctuate the working day, all begin with a different prayer, precisely because in the day hours there is work to be done, there are needs to be met, there are burdens to be overcome: Deus in adjutorium meum intende," begins each one -- "God, come to my assistance."  And then, "Domine, adjuvantum me festina! -- Lord, make haste to help me!"   In Myanmar, there is work to be done; there are needs to be met; and there are burdens to be overcome.  If you listen, you can hear a version of that prayer rising up out of Myanmar right this very minute.  That prayer is being directed to God.  That prayer is being directed to us.

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MYANMAR DISASTER UPDATE: "PLEASE HELP"

RARE APPEAL TO OUTSIDE WORLD BY BURMESE JUNTA

Super-Hurricane Kills Thousands

Tens of thousands dead. Hundreds of thousands homeless. Millions hungry, as the "rice bowl of Asia" is broken by an 120mph cyclone. The effects will linger for months, worldwide.

This is far worse than any natural disaster the United States has ever suffered. The death toll is already much higher than the Johnstown Flood, the Chicago Fire, the San Francisco Earthquake, the Galveston Hurricane, 9/11 or the recent flood in New Orleans

Your help is desperately needed right now. Please go to one of the NGO disaster relief sites linked below and give what you can. Then click on the U.S. gov't links to let your representatives in Washington know how you feel about Bush cheaping out on yet another major disaster. Do it now. Please. Thanks.

"Myanmar Cyclone Toll Rises to 15,000; 30,000 Missing"

"U.S. Hurricanes"

"Hurricane History"
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Kyoko Mori was born and raised in Japan but she has lived her adult life in America. On her first return to Japan she visits the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima. She wonders, are the horrors in the pictures of the atomic bomb aftermath really making an anti-war argument?

Mori thinks about her stepmother. "To her, the war was like some natural disaster that inconvenienced her family; it had no other implications."

We have recently learned from Facts News that Al Qaeda terrorists have sparked the massive California wildfires. But this is only the calm before the storm. Scientists at the Discovery Institute say that because the earth was created seven thousand of years ago, the "terrorists must be adjusting the tectonic plates."

Oh, sure, the people who believed Al Gore's movie will say that these scientists are spinning the truth, but the people who liked Al Gore's movie will believe anything he tells them. I have scientists to back up my argument, which is that Al Qaeda sparked the wildfires as a precursor to an earthquake that drown California in the sea. Now don't celebrate just yet, Mr. Beck, the Coit Tower may still stand above the waves. Terrorists, you have your marching orders from O'Reilly, you know what to do.

Some mornings I wake up wanting to scream. Everything seems so... normal. Birds twittering in the trees outside. An early flock of Canada geese honking overhead. A paler shade of sun streaming in through the trees outside my wide bedroom window. A beautifully cool autumn day in the offing, but I still can't shake the feeling. I rise from my bed, splash water on my face, head for the kitchen for my morning coffee, stopping to pick up my morning paper at the front door on the way. I scan the front page, leaf through to the editorial pages, just for a sign that someone, ANYONE in those crowded rooms where headlines are made and people decide what gets on Page One GETS IT. The feeling changes to a slow burn. I turn on the radio, to my favourite morning show on Radio-Canada. Most mornings it's just chatter about politics, sports, the arts, interviews with famous peope, laughter, jokes. And then sometimes, like this morning, I get lucky. I catch a conversation in progress. How come this isn't front page news? the host is asking. I like the host. He gets it. Yeah it's strange, the person he's talking to is saying. I recognize him. It's the environment correspondent. And then he continues and that sense of dread I woke up with explodes into full-blown, impotent rage.

For the first time since modern records were started a tropical cyclone is lined up to hit Iran in the next few hours.

Super Cyclonic Storm Gonu is unprecedented cyclone also has winds of over 150 mph, and with a central pressure of 898 mb it's the strongest storm ever recorded in the Arabian sea. It has already hit Oman's Gas Terminal and ports but it is heading at a country that has never had to deal with this problem in living memory.

Arabian Business lists the possible weather effects

• Storm surge generally 4.0-5.5 metres (13-18 feet) above normal.
• Major damage to lower floors of structures near the shore.
• Terrain lower than 3 metres (10 feet) above sea level may be flooded requiring massive evacuation of residential areas as far inland as 10 km (6 miles).

I've been on a diary recycling kick lately, digging up ancient (and neglected) nuggets from my formative years as a DKOS poster, hoping that they might catch some more attention the second time around.

Today's "recyclement" is something I wrote on January 2, 2005, in the wake of the Christmas Tsunami.

It was intended to be a message to those who style themselves masters of the world, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Events in the Middle East suggest to me that perhaps they need to hear the message again.

The same events suggest to me that perhaps we could all stand to be reminded that there are concerns that trump even the most compelling of disputes over land, and water, and faith, the power and privilege of states, and those who would become states unto themselves.

Central Indonesia was struck by a powerful 6.2 magnitude earthquake Saturday morning (5:45 AM Local Indonesian Time/22:45 Z). The epicenter was 25 km southwest of the city of Yogyakarta on the island of Java. Thousands are feared dead.

Reuters--"The total for now is 2,711 people killed. The number keeps climbing by the hour because evacuation is still in process," Desmawati, an official at the Social Affairs Ministry's disaster task force in Jakarta, told Reuters by telephone.

Update 10:43 AM EDT: Contributing editor MeteorBlades was visiting Indonesia this week: My understanding is that he has phoned home since the quake struck and is fine. Daily Kos also recieves several thousand hits from that region of the world every day. We hope to hear from those readers when all communications are fully restored and extend them our best wishes until that time.

We are, as a society, teetering on the crumbling edge of a chasm. Sooner or later we will lose our footing and fall, either plummeting straight down to our doom or scrabbling along the walls for a time to slow the impact. But in the end there is the landing. We are Wile E. Coyote -- cut to a top view looking down into a canyon and the teeny puff of dust at the bottom that used to be us.

No, no... we don't need the tinfoil hats. It won't be aliens or chem trails or a fascist government that will be our undoing. It will be a combination of the following factors: Peak oil, the devaluation of the dollar, the American economy "correcting" itself, the housing bubble, unending war against "terror", and natural disasters (including pandemics).

Today  here at Common Cause we have released our latest report in a series of them on government failures surrounding Hurricane Katrina - this time looking at how a decade of failed telecommunications policy has left our police and first responders without adequate communications tools when crises hit.

Based on this information we are asking for our activists from all over the country to take immediate action and put pressure on the Congress to make sure that our publicly owned airwaves are used for public safety and the public good.  Congress is expected to take up legislation this week that would set a hard deadline for the broadcast industry to turn over a portion of our airwaves.  Please join us in calling our Senators today to make sure that our publicly owned airwaves are used for public safety and the public good.  More details after the jump.  Thank you so much again for making us feel welcome at this wonderful community.

The military is now planning just how to deploy our Standing Army rather than the National Guard, during natural emergencies. Bush has urged Congress to consider laws allowing a greater role for the active-duty armed forces in disaster relief. My question is what happened to our state run National Guard? The reason given by this Administration considering this plan is Katrina. The answer I have is, If you did not send more than half of the National Guard

I have a confession to make. I am not just writer of humorous riffs about Tom Cruise, feel good tributes, and diaries about monkey names for The Big Mistake. I am a voracious reader of almost anything that tells me THE END IS NEAR.  Which can be a bad thing, since optimistic as I am, I have occasional bouts with anxiety (who doesn't nowadays, eh?).  So tonight, after reading these well written, informative, relevant, and frankly SCARE THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF YOU diaries:

Bush administration is 'woefully unprepared' for a flu pandemic by Plutonium Page

Playing Chicken with the Apocalypse by Devilstower

and

Your Credit-The October Surprise is Nigh by cskendrick

....well, I went O-F-F-Off