Gore Wows ‘Em At Cannes

Exclusive to Blue Crab Boulevard: Our magnificent operative from Magic 8-Ball Photography and Pawn, Inc. has come through yet again. This is an exclusive picture of Al Gore Debuting his new movie at the Cannes Film Festival with his rarely seen supporting cast! You saw it here first!

UPDATE: Here's a review of Gore's movie by someone who believes that human induced global warming is occurring, but who points out moral flaws that undermine the message in the movie. They are pretty glaring, too.

Half Man, Half Bear And Half Pig

Al Gore will save us. I'm serial.

H/T Hugh Hewitt

How Politics Is Played

A) Democrats want to use "culture of corruption" as campaign issue.

B) Prominent Democrats get caught with hands in cookie jar (or money in freezer as case may be).

C) Democrats begin feeling heat from "netroots" to do something about members caught in B).

D) Democratic leadership tries to get member in B) to step down. B) refuses.

E) Democrats get pliable journalist to smear someone else to throw C) off the trail.

This one stinks out loud folks. If you can't see it you are not paying attention. Within a very short time indeed, the victim of E) is demanding a retraction.

ABC News reporter Brian Ross released a story saying Dennis Hastert was "included in" an FBI investigation into the Abramoff scandal. Hastert, in what has to be darn near a record got a statement from DOJ that he was NOT under investigation and is demanding ABC retract Ross' story. (No statement up at DOJ when I checked, but I am not sure there would be for this kind of thing, either). The ABC story was based on unnamed sources, identified only by the term "Federal Officials". I rather suspect Ross got rolled on this one, big time.

By the way, C) appears to be hounding off after this one, big time. So it worked for now.

UPDATE: OK, this may actually be worse than rolling a reporter. ABC News has changed the story without acknowledging they have done so. These down the memory hole moments DO NOT WORK in this day and age and it makes you look very bad if you do it.

Text of original (From Hugh Hewitt)Note – numerous misspellings are (sic) – indicates to me the story was rushed out. To make the evening news, perhaps?:

Officials: Hastert "In the Mix" of Congressional Bribery Investigation

Brian Ross Reports:

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is under investigtaion by the FBI, which is seeking to determine his role in an ongoing public corruption probe into members of Congress, ABC News has learned from high level official sources.

Federal officials say the information implicating Hastert was developed from convicted lobbysists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government.

The letter was written shortly after a fund-raiser for Hastert at a restaurant owned by Abramoff. Abramoff and his clients contributed more than $26,000 at the time.

The day Abramoff was indicted, Hastert denied any unlawful connection and said he would donate to charity any campaign contribution he had received from Abramoff and his clients.

A spokesman for Speaker Hastert told ABC News, "We are not aware of this. The Speaker has a long history and a well-documented record of opposing Indian Reservation shopping for casino gaming purposes."

This week, Hastert has been outspoken in his criticism of the FBI for its raid on the office of anotehr congressman under investigation, Democrat William Jefferson of Louisiana.

"My opinion is that they toook the worng path, Hastert said of the FBI. "They need to back up, and we need to go from there."

Text as it appears at the moment I am writing this – I wouldn't trust that it will be the same by morning.

Federal officials say the Congressional bribery investigation now includes Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, based on information from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government.

Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes.

The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government.

The letter was written shortly after a fund-raiser for Hastert at a restaurant owned by Abramoff. Abramoff and his clients contributed more than $26,000 at the time.

The day Abramoff was indicted, Hastert denied any unlawful connection and said he would donate to charity any campaign contribution he had received from Abramoff and his clients.

A spokesman for Speaker Hastert told ABC News, "We are not aware of this.  The Speaker has a long history and a well-documented record of opposing Indian Reservation shopping for casino gaming purposes."

This week, Hastert has been outspoken in his criticism of the FBI for its raid on the office of another congressman under investigation, Democrat William Jefferson of Louisiana.

"My opinion is that they took the wrong path, Hastert said of the FBI.  "They need to back up, and we need to go from there."

This one will backfire and it will backfire rather badly.

UPDATE: ABC News just changed the story again! Unreal. NOW they are saying their double-super-ultra-top-uber-secret-unnamed source told them – double pinky swear – that people aren't reading the DOJ flat denial properly. Presumably that means we aren't capable of Clintonian micro-parsing.

DOJ statement: "Speaker Hastert is not under investigation by the Justice Department." 

ABC Quote (from this revision of the revision of the revision.. you get the picture): "You guys wrote the story very carefully but they are not reading it very carefully," a senior official said. … "ABC’s law enforcement sources said the Justice Department denial was meant only to deny that Hastert was a formal “target” or “subject” of the investigation."

Within the next few hours expect further "clarifications" from ABC on how "Not under investigation" actually means "is about to be kidnapped by space aliens". Because no matter how you try to revise the hell out of your website article, you got caught. Your original is not "carefully written". It is a flat statement that Hastert IS under investigation.

Face it ABC, you got rolled and you are trying desperately to not have to admit it.

UPDATE: Riehl World View has some really interesting research up.

Update On Egyptian Blogger Alaa Abd El-Fatah

Alaa Abd El-Fatah remains in custody in an Egyptian jail. Rantings of a Sandmonkey reports several of those arrested with Alaa have been released, but not Alaa and some others. More demonstrations are planned. Please help out if you can at the demonstration in any of the cities where events are planned (none are anywhere close to me, darn it).

As the Sandmonkey points out, freedom of speech is an issue that everyone regardless of political belief or national origin can get behind. (Well, except for those people who jail people like Alaa). Please help.

Earlier coverage here, here and here. 

Ironic As All Heck

Don Singleton has a report of probably the most ironic things I have heard of lately. A Briton was ambushed in Yemen by gunmen and dragged from his car. Then they spotted an emblem on his car window. It was a sticker from the Portsmouth Football Club. So the gunmen were big soccer fans then? Nope, the sticker featured a prominent crescent moon and a star. So the gunmen thought the Briton was a practicing Muslim and let him go.

The symbols on the sticker were based on the symbol used by the chancellor to King Richard I, William de Longchamp, who adopted the crescent moon and star to honor the Third Crusade.

Too funny.

Interesting Read

Here's an interesting read on data mining and social network analysis. It's not hysterical. It is a bit negative about the use – and the usefulness –  of the techniques. One thing that the article points out is that it is a bit hard to opine intelligently without details of the program. This article doesn't help in that regard, but it has some good information about the pitfalls some see in the techniques.

How Inconvenient

Dr. Robert Balling reviews Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth". He has a few inconvenient truths that Gore conveniently left out of the movie. You really have to read this, it's rather interesting. Balling's close says it all.

Throughout the film Gore displays his passion for the global warming issue, and it is obvious that he has dedicated a substantial amount of time to learning about climate change and the greenhouse effect. This leads to an obvious question. The Kyoto Protocol was negotiated in December of 1997 giving the Clinton-Gore administration more than three years to present the Protocol to the United States Senate for ratification. Given Gore's position in the senate and his knowledge and passion for global warming, one must wonder why then Vice President Gore did not seize on what appears to have been an opportunity of a lifetime?

"An Inconvenient Truth" is billed as the scariest movie you'll ever see. It may well be, but that's in part because it is not the most accurate depiction of the state of global warming science. The enormous uncertainties surrounding the global warming issue are conveniently missing in "An Inconvenient Truth."

Balling is a climatologist.

Joan Baez Nests

Joan Baez has taken up residence in a tree. Ok, I know you think I'm making this up. No, I'm not. She has actually taken up living in a tree in an effort to stop a landowner from actually exercising his rights to his property.

Folk singer Joan Baez and a woman who once spent two years perched atop a giant California redwood took up residence on Wednesday in a tree in a Los Angeles community garden that is threatened with demolition.

Baez, who gave voice to Vietnam War protesters, and Julia "Butterfly" Hill, whose anti-logging protest in the late 1990s drew widespread attention, said they would occupy the tree in shifts.

The 5.7-hectare garden in the middle of gritty south Los Angeles is tended by some 350 farmers, many of them immigrants, who have been growing fruits and vegetables there since 1992.

The farmers are threatened with eviction after the Trust for Public Land failed in its efforts to buy the site from the owner, who plans to build a warehouse there.

Well, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have managed to obtain a photo of Joan's new digs! The hardworking guys over at Magic 8-Ball Photography and Convenience Mart, Inc. have done it again! Dang, they are good!

God Bless That Place In The Middle Of The North Something Place

Sorry, folks. We had to change the title of that old song to comply with the new rules from the Michigan Department of Education. According to them, the dreaded words "America" and "Americans" must never be uttered in relation to the people who live here in the Middle of that North something Continent thingie.

The Department of Education asserts that "Americans" includes Mexicans, Canadians and others in the Western Hemisphere, so referring to U.S. residents as Americans is inappropriate. In the department's view, "America" happens to include South, Central and North America. Accordingly, when referring to the colonial period, the state bureaucracy requires teachers to refer to "the colonies of North America" or "North Americans." After the American Revolution, the nation is called the United States (not of America).

The state's edict would be laughable if it were not so disgraceful. Instead of focusing on better teaching methods and educational resources to help our hard-working teachers and parents, the Department of Education spends its energy on confusing, misleading, historically inaccurate and counterproductive wordplay.

One can only imagine how teachers struggle to meet the semantic dictates of an educational bureaucracy gone awry. According to the department, before the American Revolution, George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were North Americans. But so were the French colonists in the Louisiana Territory, the Spanish settlers in Mexico and the British colonists in Canada — not to mention the Native Americans.

This is probably one of the most ridiculous cases of political correctness driven stupidity yet.

China Arming

The Washington Post reports that Pentagon planners are growing increasingly wary of a Chinese military buildup that appears to be aimed at gaining the ability to project power.

China's military buildup is increasingly aimed at projecting power far beyond its shores into the western Pacific to be able to interdict U.S. aircraft carriers and other nations' military forces, according to a Pentagon report released yesterday that outlines continued concerns over China's rising strategic influence in Asia.

Chinese military planners are focusing to a greater degree than in the past on targeting ships and submarines at long ranges using anti-ship cruise missiles, partly in reaction to Taiwan Strait crises in 1995 and 1996 that saw the U.S. military intervene with carrier battle groups, the report said.

This seems to be directly aimed at Taiwan in the short run. In the long run, they may have bigger ambitions.

The 50-page report states that China's military buildup remains primarily focused on Taiwan, and notes that its current ability to sustain military power over long distances is limited. But the report also outlines Chinese military ambitions that go well beyond Taiwan, and reiterates the Pentagon's latest formulation on China's military threat, stating that "China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States."

China's defense budget is expanding apace with the new investments, the report said. Beijing officially projects a growth in defense spending of 14.5 percent this year to about $35 billion. But the report, citing the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, puts the actual funding at twice or triple that amount — or as much as $105 billion — when all military-related spending is tallied.

Well, it's certainly getting interesting in the world right now. Somehow, I can't help but wondering if the plans to double China's fleet of civilian aircraft is not also part of what is going on here. Airlift capacity is also part of projecting power.

On Moral Clarity

Mary Katherine Ham has a very good column up over at Townhall.com. It discusses the reactions to two incidents at colleges here in the US this past spring. It discusses the way the people accused of wrongdoing were handled by officials, by administrators, by students and by outside interests.

And it is damning.

"I was aiming to follow in the footsteps of one of my role-models, Muhammad Atta."

–Mohammad Taheri-azar

Do you remember Taheri-azar? The 25-year-old Iranian graduate of the University of North Carolina rented an SUV in March and drove it into The Pit, a campus gathering place for UNC students. He accelerated into the standard college crowd of preachers, smokers, gawkers, and cause-hawkers. He hit nine people and injured six. None died, much to Taheri-azar’s chagrin.

He told the press and the judge and anyone who would listen that he was seeking vengeance for the deaths of Muslims at the hands of bigoted Westerners in a post-9/11 world. He told everyone that he had intended to kill, had premeditated the killing. He even told the 911 dispatcher, just minutes after he had used a group of UNC co-eds as jack stands.

He was immediately arrested and charged with nine counts of attempted first-degree murder and nine counts of assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injury with intent to kill.

A couple weeks later, just eight miles down the road in the city of Durham, three Duke lacrosse players were accused of brutally assaulting and raping an exotic dancer at a party on March 13.

There were not dozens of witnesses to the crime; there was not an overabundance of physical evidence; the boys did not confess and turn themselves in; they did not announce to 911 dispatchers that the rape was premeditated and that they felt like their "white privilege" entitled them to certain liberties with those of other races and socio-economic classes. 

It was weeks before any lacrosse player was charged with a crime, by which time, the results of DNA tests administered to the entire team had come back revealing no matches at all.

Now, let’s compare the treatment of the accused in each case by local officials, the press, and the local community. I think the results are reflective of a bit of a priority problem in the moral clarity department.

Read the rest. Juxtaposed together the differences are astonishing. And appalling.

101st Bog Of The Day

Now I really know why I am doing this project of mine to visit one member of the 101st Fighting Keyboardists each day. It's to visit places like Just For The Record so I can find neat stories like this one. That, ladies and gents is the luckiest man on earth! Buy a lottery ticket!

Back to Just for the Record. That game is evil. You should not play it. Ever. Really.

Fire At Istanbul Airport

A large fire appears to be under control at the Istanbul airport. The blaze caused heavy damage in a freight area. Tanker aircraft were needed to drop water on the blaze. Reports on how the fire started are conflicting and rather spotty at the moment.

Authorities gave various explanations for what caused the blaze, which billowed black smoke 100 feet into the air at Turkey's busiest airport before it was brought under control.

Kasapoglu said a short-circuit was to blame, while another deputy governor, Vedat Muftuoglu, told CNN-Turk television at the scene that a spark from a welder's torch caused the fire.

Muftuoglu said there was no sign the blaze was terrorism-related.

Kasapoglu assured passengers that there was no danger and flights were taking place, although with delays.

Private NTV television said the fire began in a section where fuel depots were located.

Planes dropped water onto the flames, and airport authorities said the fire was being tamed. A firefighter atop a tall ladder poured a stream of water on the blaze.

"The fire is under control and we're taking precautions to prevent it from spreading to passenger terminals," said Baris Tozar, the undersecretary of the Transportation Ministry.

There is one fascinating factoid to take away from all this though. There is a news service in Turkey called "Sky Turk". Which would be a fabulous name for a cartoon superhero.

UPDATE: CNN coverage. From the description of what was in the building, it's lucky this wasn't more of a disaster. But why were there explosives in an air freight building?

Portents And Omens And Signs

Oh my.

A new enigma is spreading on the Internet. Some even call it a new kind of miracle. According to various Web sites, for the past several years unusual and unexplainable circles of light have been observed in many towns and cities. They began in the United States, but soon spread throughout the world.

"These circles," according to a writer named J.D. Rabbit at one of these sites, "most commonly appear on the sides of houses. … In most cases they appear when the sun is out, generally when the sunlight is at a suitable angle to reflect from one or more windows onto the house adjacent. Some are seen only in the early morning; others appear at midday or late afternoon for a few hours; others can only be seen in spring and fall; and some have even been observed by bright moonlight. Many have been observed in the same place year after year, while others appear for a while and then vanish."

You know, it's just astonishing how otherwise apparently sane people can go completely Borneo over some weird conspiracy theory. If I saw a weird "circle of light", I'd immediately begin to look for the source, not jump to the conclusion that something mysterious was going on.

"At this time of great political, economic, and social crisis," says Benjamin Creme, "Maitreya will inspire humanity to see itself as one family, and create a civilization based on sharing, economic and social justice, and global cooperation." Creme is the leader of Share International, a religious movement that awaits the coming of "Maitreya," a sort of extraterrestrial master who will enlighten the world. According to Creme, circles of light are just "another sign of Maitreya's presence in the world."

Good luck on that whole extraterrestrial thing, Ben. Especially when your omen turns out to be a reflection.

"It certainly is a curious reflection of sunlight on some windows," says Stefano Bagnasco, a physicist at the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Turin, and a member of the Italian skeptic group CICAP. "I was able to directly observe some of these 'signs,' and in each case the building in front of which they appeared was completely covered with windows. Whenever the sun was in the right position to strike this reflecting surface, it would immediately produce the phenomenon. This is something that can certainly appear as quite odd, since these reflections cannot take place when both the windows and the building in front of it are perpendicular to the ground (unless the sun is very low on the horizon). But it happens quite frequently with inclined or open windows, like those found in modern buildings."

They have some pictures showing the "phenomenon" as well, so go over and take a look.

Beating The Odds

Big deal, we did this a long time ago!

A husband, wife and their first child beat enormous odds and share the same birthday. Evelin Alballat was introduced to Tony Osman several years ago by one of her relatives who learned they were both born on May 21. The couple married two years ago.

Their baby's due date was May 20 and Alballat started having contractions around 10 p.m. that night. She was then admitted to Marian Medical Center.

"I kept staring at the clock and wanted it to turn past midnight before I delivered my baby," she said.

Danny Osman entered the world about 12 hours later.

….

The chances of three family members sharing a birthday are .000751 percent, according to Paul Murphy, a mathematician and dean of academic affairs at Allan Hancock College.

Well, let's see: My brother's birthday is November 23. My oldest son was also born on November 23, making him my brother's automatic favorite nephew. Then my wife's birthday is also November 23rd – making her my brother automatic favorite sister-in-law. It doesn't take much to keep my brother amused.