Bearing Bad News

It looks like we may have to take a day off from monkeys and apes today. It appears to be bear news day. Or bad news for bears. Or something.

Item one: German hunters have been given the green light to shoot a bear that has decided he really, really likes killing sheep. This is the first wild bear to be seen in Bavaria for 170 years, and was at first somewhat of a celebrity. Then he went on a rampage.

The German animal protection agency in Bavaria described as "hysterical" the decision to kill the bear, which had at first been welcomed when it wandered across the Austrian border at the weekend. But authorities were adamant.

"It is now a problem bear," Bavarian environment minister Werner Schnappauf said. "A man-bear encounter could occur at any time. It cannot be allowed to roam freely. We will ask hunters to shoot the bear."

Joern Ehlers, a spokesman for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), told German radio that it was unusual for bears, normally shy animals, to seek out food in the vicinity of humans.

"The WWF is trying to catch the bear alive," Ehlers said. "Initially we wanted to tag it so we could better track its movements, but now it looks as if this bear cannot be left out in the wild because it's simply too dangerous."

Of course the activists just want to capture the poor thing. Frankly, we don't think it's worth the risk to a human to try to capture it. This bear appears to have gone rogue and it really probably is best to kill it. What's interesting is that the bear slaughtered a number of sheep, but only ate the livers and the hearts. Are we sure this bear is from Austria and not Scotland?

Item two: A Finnish woman has been busy demonstrating the new national sport: the bear punt. Ok, that isn't strictly true. A Finnish woman out for a walk in the woods came face to face with a momma bear and her cub. Now anyone who knows anything about bears knows this is a particularly dangerous situation. Momma bears are very, very protective of their babies. So, the momma bear started to maul the woman who promptly kicked the bear right in the nose, causing it to flee.

"In this case the kick had the desired effect. If the bear had wanted to kill, such a kick would only have made the bear more aggressive," local police spokesman Jukka Turpeinen said.

Which of course brings to mind Blazing Saddles when Jim tells Sheriff Bart not to try to shoot Mongo, " If you shoot him, you'll just make him mad."

Sadly, we couldn't get the trifecta on bear facts, but the day is young!

UPDATE: The German bear appears to have fled the country and is believed to have returned to Austria.

They Weren’t Born Again Yesterday

The title to this post is a paraphrase of an absolutely killer sentence from an article by Ruth Marcus in today's Washington Post. Marcus sees great danger in the Democrat's attempts to split off some portion of the "religious right" from the Republican party. Danger to the soul of the party as she puts it.

Democrats these days are a party on a mission that might sound impossible: to persuade evangelical Christian voters to consider converting — to the Democratic Party.

Just as Republicans have worked, and to some extent succeeded, at peeling off some African American voters from the Democratic Party, evangelical voters are too big a part of the electorate (about a quarter) for one party simply to write off.

Democrats have a shot at luring some of them, but it's a long shot, and one that poses dangerous temptations for the party as it tries to narrow the God gap.

Evangelicals have become increasingly Republican. In 1987, 34 percent of white evangelicals identified themselves as Republicans, 29 percent as Democrats. Today, that GOP advantage has grown to 51 to 22. And evangelical voters' growing dissatisfaction with President Bush doesn't appear to be trickling down into congressional races; in a recent Pew poll, 64 percent of evangelicals (compared with 41 percent of all voters) said they would vote for the Republican congressional candidate in November, about the same as in polls before the 2002 midterms.

It actually is quite amusing to watch as some politicians try to prove their religious chops by throwing out random bible quotations and to try a "what would Jesus not do" strategy. Especially when still other Democrats voice public worries over faith. While trying to sound religious. There's a sort of surreal aspect to watching it unfold.

To some extent, Democrats could help themselves with evangelicals simply by showing up — at the megachurches, on Christian radio and in other venues where Democrats have been scarce. Whether the Democrats are deploying the right messengers is more questionable: a liberal San Francisco Democrat and a civil union-signing Vermont governor may not be the party's best bet with evangelicals. More important, occasional drop-bys and clunky dropping of biblical references aren't going to do the trick. These voters weren't born again yesterday.

Rather, the Democrats' discussion with evangelicals has to get beyond linguistic "reframing" to substantive areas where the Democrats and evangelicals can find common ground: poverty, the environment, Darfur.

Yet that is precisely what the Democrats are trying to do. Reframe issues by nuancing certain issues. And it sounds awkward and phony. Sort of like the earlier post about using the "they're worse than we are" strategy. Marcus is very worried that the party will nuance themselves right into losing their soul.

Likewise, it's fine for Hillary Clinton to talk about the "tragedy" of abortion, or for Democrats to emphasize the importance of reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies. But I get awfully nervous when Redeem the Vote's Brinson says of abortion, "As long as the national Democratic Party makes that a centerpiece of their platform or something they're advocating, as long as that's front and center and they're saying women have a right to do this, it's going to turn off religious voters."

So, by all means, let Democrats woo evangelicals and cast the message in a way that speaks to religious voters. But in doing so, keep in mind: What does it profit a party to gain a demographic but lose its soul?

It helps if you have values instead of talking points. But it's hard to just go out and buy a good set of values at your local discount store. I think that's where there is a problem and a disconnect. But it's hard to look away from a slow motion train wreck, so this will bear watching.

More Hopeful News From Iraq

From none other than the Guardian, comes this article: Iraqis to control security by end of year. It's actually not badly written and is not overwhelmingly negative in tone - not at all like a lot of Guardian articles I have read over the past few years.

The new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, today said Iraqis could be in control of security by the end of the year in all of the country apart from Baghdad and Anbar province.

Mr Maliki, appearing at a news conference with Tony Blair, who is visiting Baghdad, indicated that he expected the Iraqi government to begin taking over control of some of the more peaceful provinces from the multinational forces from next month.

The article does go on to say all is not perfect over there but doesn't belabor the point. It has some good quotes from Tony Blair:

Mr Blair stressed that the timetable for troop withdrawal depended upon the security situation in Iraq and that the formation of a new democratically elected Iraqi government marked a "new beginning" for the country.

Mr Blair's visit to the capital's heavily fortified green zone had been shrouded in secrecy, as deadly violence continued to provide the backdrop to the new administration - only agreed after months of bitter wrangling between rival factions.

Mr Blair said it was a privilege to be in Iraq to see the "energy, enthusiasm and determination" of the new government.

"It has been three years of struggle to get to this point and has been longer and harder than any of us would have wanted it to be but this is a new beginning," he said.

He told reporters he wanted to see the Iraqi people take charge of their own destiny and "write the next chapter of Iraqi history".

"For the first time we have a government of national unity that crosses divides. It is there for a four-year term and it is there elected by the votes of millions of Iraqis," Mr Blair said.

"There is no vestige of excuse for people to carry on terrorism or bloodshed."

I think that shows where the Iraqis are heading. There is no longer any legitimate excuse for the "insurgency" and I think the new policies the Iraqis themselves will enact and carry out will start taking a serious toll on any holdouts. These are good signs all around. One thing caught my eye. It may be an oddity in British use of the English language, but the reporter chose what to me is an odd word to describe the return of troops to Britain:

He stressed that was not a timetable for troop withdrawal, and was not necessarily heralding the swift repatriation of large numbers of British troops.

I have personally never seen that particular word ever used in this context. Normally it is used to describe the return of prisoners (which is actually the example given in the Merriam-Webster on-line edition). Maybe that's the way the reporter thinks of it, maybe it's just an oddity of usage.

About Time

Finally, the White House is directly answering the screeches from the left that Bush lied. Peter Wehner, who is the deputy assistant to the president and director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives writes an article in today's Opinion Journal debunking the worst of the lies and distortions.

The president misled Americans to convince them to go to war. "There is no question [the Bush administration] misled the nation and led us into a quagmire in Iraq," according to Ted Kennedy. Jimmy Carter charged that on Iraq, "President Bush has not been honest with the American people." And Al Gore has said that an "abuse of the truth" characterized the administration's "march to war." These charges are themselves misleading, which explains why no independent body has found them credible. Most of the world was operating from essentially the same set of assumptions regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities. Important assumptions turned out wrong; but mistakenly relying on faulty intelligence is a world apart from lying about it.

Let's review what we know. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the intelligence community's authoritative written judgment on specific national-security issues. The 2002 NIE provided a key judgment: "Iraq has continued its [WMD] programs in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of U.N. restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."

Thanks to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission, which investigated the causes of intelligence failures in the run-up to the war, we now know that the President's Daily Brief (PDB) and the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief "were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the NIE" (my emphasis). We also know that the intelligence in the PDB was not "markedly different" from that given to Congress. This helps explains why John Kerry, in voting to give the president the authority to use force, said, "I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our security." It's why Sen. Kennedy said, "We have known for many years that Saddam Hussein is seeking and developing weapons of mass destruction." And it's why Hillary Clinton said in 2002, "In the four years since the inspectors, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability and his nuclear program."

Beyond that, intelligence agencies from around the globe believed Saddam had WMD. Even foreign governments that opposed his removal from power believed Iraq had WMD: Just a few weeks before Operation Iraqi Freedom, Wolfgang Ischinger, German ambassador to the U.S., said, "I think all of our governments believe that Iraq has produced weapons of mass destruction and that we have to assume that they continue to have weapons of mass destruction."

In addition, no serious person would justify a war based on information he knows to be false and which would be shown to be false within months after the war concluded. It is not as if the WMD stockpile question was one that wasn't going to be answered for a century to come.

It goes on from there and systematically shows that the charges being made against Bush by the most unscrupulous politicians actually do show who the liars are. (Hint: not Bush). Now, do I think even one of the screeching people will change their minds because of this? No, that would let facts get in the way of truthiness. But at least the White House is not just ignoring these cheap hack jobs by partisans.

Please read it all. Warning: abusive comments will not be tolerated. Period.

UPDATE: Others blogging: Lori Byrd is writing at Wizbang, Chequer-Board, Powerline, Fraters Libertas, Neo-Neocon, and Presto-Pundit.

American Flag League

I've just been added to the ranks of the American Flag League. Thanks to Cap'n Teach.

American Flag League

The site has been appropriately updated.

In The Tin Ear Department

I've been saying for a long time (well, long in blog years) that the "culture of corruption" meme was a two-edged sword that was very dangerous for the Democrats to try to use as an election tool. And there have been plenty of indication that it simply wasn't a really good idea to try it, since it was just as likely to cut the people wielding it as the intended target. The weekend raid of Jefferson's office pretty well showed just how dangerous it was.

Some people will not listen.

Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Mr. Jefferson's situation was that of an individual who had yet to be charged formally. The Democratic case against Republicans, he suggested, went to a pattern of trading influence for personal gain within an incestuous world of revolving-door staff members, lobbyists and campaign fund-raisers that Republicans helped establish.

"They are different scales," Mr. Emanuel said. "One is a party outlook and operation; the other is an individual's action. They have institutional corruption."

Even before the case against Mr. Jefferson became public, Republicans were pointing to ethical questions about the activities of another Democrat, Representative Alan B. Mollohan of West Virginia, who is under F.B.I. scrutiny for his personal finances and his efforts to steer millions of dollars to nonprofit organizations that he helped control.

On Monday, Democratic leaders were considering steps to isolate Mr. Jefferson, including the possibility of removing him from his seat on the Ways and Means Committee. Ms. Pelosi had already endorsed the idea of an ethics inquiry against Mr. Jefferson, and one was initiated last week.

I'm sure Representative Emanuel is at least somewhat skilled at politics, and has good staff and all that. He's also got a tin ear of biblical proportions. The way he's trying to nuance and hairsplit this will not only not work, but it will convince average people that the whole lot of them are crooks. Saying, in effect, they're worse than we are is not exactly what I would call a good idea. It is, to the average person, a distinction without a difference.

Frankly, the Democrats will hurt themselves if they try to keep using this. This issue is rapidly turning from just a two-edged sword into something more closely resembling a running chainsaw. Best not to try juggling it.

UPDATE: Dr. Steven Taylor calls it much the same way.