This Is Kind Of Weird

Apparently, Blue Crab Boulevard is listed on Blogshares - I was completely unaware of this until just a few minutes ago. I had vaguely heard of Blogshares at some point a while ago, but really hadn't thought about it in quite some time.

Does anyone know how I got listed there?

This Will Generate As Much Excitement

As watching paint dry. The Democrats plan to unveil their magical plan to regain control of Congress. Frankly, if these points are the best ideas they can come up with, they are totally and completely out of touch with people.

The Democrats' plan would increase the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour from $5.15, grant authority to the secretary of Health and Human Services to negotiate lower prescription-drug prices with pharmaceutical companies for those in Medicare's drug program and cut student-loan interest rates — rising to 6.8% in July — by half.

The agenda also calls for enacting recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, formed after the 2001 terror attacks, to boost national security and funding for it, and for eliminating about $18 billion in tax breaks and subsidies for oil companies. Pelosi said savings would go to develop alternative fuels.

Most entry level jobs, even at McDonald's, pay higher than the proposed new minimum wage. All of these points are empty, feel good, sound bite gestures. This is really weak. I think they are falling into their own Sale Of Two Cities rhetorical trap. They have a platform that addresses a mythical constituency. It should produce lots of mythical votes. I'd book the hotel now if I were them.

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit has another roundup of quotes. The Dems look, well, silly.

She Blinded Me With Science!

Conventional wisdom: Men react more strongly than women do to erotic images. Men are highly visual, women are not.

Scientific proof: The conventional wisdom is completely wrong.

Erotic images elicit faster and stronger electrical responses in a woman's brain than other images ranging from pleasant to disturbing.

The finding might not sound surprising, but researches did not expect responses to erotic images to emerge so quickly, apparently involving different circuits than the processing of other images.

"That surprised us," said study leader Andrey Anokhin of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. "We believed both pleasant and disturbing images would evoke a rapid response, but erotic scenes always elicited the strongest response."

The test involved 264 women who were shown 55 images of water skiers, snarling dogs, partially clad couples in sensual poses, and other scenes.

Electrodes on the subjects' scalps measured brain activity.

The signals begin firing long before a subject was conscious of what she was seeing, the researchers reported recently in the journal Brain Research.

Erotic images elicited neuron firing within 160 milliseconds—about 20 percent faster than occurred with any of the other pictures. The stimulation then branched out to different brain regions for erotic images compared to the others.

20% is a very significant difference. The fact that the signals began before the subject even realized what she was seeing is really interesting. Maybe the hardwiring between men's and women's brains is not as great as we have been told in the past.

Security Crackdown Begins

Iraqi forces have hit the streets in Baghdad in record numbers during the initial phase of the crackdown promised yesterday by the Iraqi Prime Minister.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi troops were out in force and cars were backed up at checkpoints Wednesday in Baghdad as a deadly car bomb killed four people and clashes broke out in two Sunni Arab strongholds shortly after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched a major security crackdown aimed at ending the violence that has devastated the capital.

Tens of thousands of Iraqi police and soldiers deployed throughout the capital of six million people, searching cars and securing roads into and out of Baghdad.

Despite the stepped up security measures, a parked car bomb struck the northern district of Qahira Wednesday morning, killing at least four civilians and wounding six, police Lt. Ali Mitaab said.

Defense Minister Abdul-Qader Mohammed Jassim said that 80 percent of the operations staged by "terrorists and organized crime" target civilians. He added that 15 percent are against Iraqi security forces and 5 percent are against coalition forces. He did not provide comparative figures or any other details.

Clashes broke out in the northern Sunni district of Azamiyah shortly before noon, with heavy exchanges of gunfire sending residents scurrying for cover. The clashes took place near the Grand Imam Abu Hanifa mosque, the holiest Sunni Muslim shrine in Iraq. There were reports of casualties or other details.

Most stores were closed in Azamiyah and mostly Sunni Dora, two strongholds of the insurgency. Entire streets in Dora, southern Baghdad, were deserted, including al-Moalemeem road, dubbed "death road" by residents because of the frequent clashes there between Sunni insurgents and security forces and sectarian killings.

In Baghdad's central and mainly Shiite Karradah district, where a series of deadly car bombs took place in the past week, Iraqi army troops patrolled on foot. Some were deployed at main intersections in pickup trucks with machine-guns mounted on their roofs.

U.S. troops patrolled parts of Baghdad in convoys of up to four humvees. They used the more heavily armored Bradley fighting vehicles in Dora.

Sounds like things are actually off to a good start. This will take some time, but the fact that it is an Iraqi led operation will be heartening for the people themselves, I think. 

Actual Scientists

Debunking Al Gore's movie.

Appearing before the Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development last year, Carleton University paleoclimatologist Professor Tim Patterson testified, "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years." Patterson asked the committee, "On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

Patterson concluded his testimony by explaining what his research and "hundreds of other studies" reveal: on all time scales, there is very good correlation between Earth's temperature and natural celestial phenomena such changes in the brightness of the Sun.

…

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, former marine researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland and professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, takes apart Gore's dramatic display of Antarctic glaciers collapsing into the sea. "The breaking glacier wall is a normally occurring phenomenon which is due to the normal advance of a glacier," says Winterhalter. "In Antarctica the temperature is low enough to prohibit melting of the ice front, so if the ice is grounded, it has to break off in beautiful ice cascades. If the water is deep enough icebergs will form."

Dr. Wibjörn Karlén, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden, admits, "Some small areas in the Antarctic Peninsula have broken up recently, just like it has done back in time. The temperature in this part of Antarctica has increased recently, probably because of a small change in the position of the low pressure systems."

There is quite a lot more. Frankly, the argument that Gore states that this is all settled is not true. Now will any of this change the minds of true believers? Heck no. They trust a politician instead of bona fide scientists.

Along Came A Spider

A young man from Leicester, England was fed up with his job, so he quit. Apparently, he was also fed up with a female co-worker. He left her a lovely parting gift, in a nice box addressed to her.

A venomous tarantula.

At Leicester Magistrates' Court in central England, Mahlon Hector, 22, pleaded guilty to delivering a rare Mexican red-kneed tarantula in a box addressed to a woman colleague at the branch of the store Marks & Spencer in Leicester, where they both worked. At the same time, he handed store bosses his resignation.

The intended recipient, Susan Griffin, was not hurt.

Hector is to be sentenced later on the charge of sending a letter or other article conveying a threat on March 28. He did not reveal his motives in court Wednesday.

The parting gift was rounded up by the folks from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The tarantula is not particularly harmful unless you happen to be allergic.

They Don’t Get Out Much

The folks in New Zealand appear to either be very odd, or very out of touch with the world. It would seem that the big attraction at an agricultural exhibition in Wellington are live sex shows featuring an amorous bull and a go-cart. No, I am not making this up. Although I rather wish I was at this point.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Live "sex shows" of bulls mounting a simulated cow have become a big attraction at an agricultural exhibition taking place in New Zealand.

The fake 'cow' — a small go-kart with natural cowhide on its roof — was developed by Ambreed New Zealand Ltd. to collect semen from bulls more safely and efficiently and improve artificial breeding of cows.

Note to self: Take the rawhide cover off the golf cart at once.

The go-kart, driven by a human operator, draws close to a bull and adjusts to the proper height.

The experience can be a little alarming.

"It's quite a daunting feeling when you consider you've got a bull there that weighs a thousand kilograms sitting on top of you and is in quite an aggressive mood," Andrew Medley, production manager at Ambreed, told Reuters.

Well, you'd be aggressive, too. How would you like to find out your date is actually a machine? Wait! They already did that in The Stepford Wives. Twice.

Another Sign Of Shifting Momentum

Dana Milbank also has a piece in the Washington Post today about the positive developments that have been happening in the past weeks that are improving the political situation for the White House. There is a very, very revealing fact in the article. Chuck "Where's That Camera?" Schumer was visibly nonplussed by the recent events. If you've knock Schumer back a step, things are going very well indeed.

Within hours of hearing yesterday morning that Karl Rove wouldn't be prosecuted in the CIA leak case, Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), the chief of the Democrats' campaign to retake the Senate, hurried to the press gallery to blunt the damage.

But it was no use. "Senator," MSNBC's Tom Curry needled Schumer, "as you know, the president has nicknames that he applies to people, and one of the nicknames he applied to Karl Rove was 'Turd Blossom.' "

"Cherry Blossom?" Schumer asked, puzzled.

"Turd Blossom," Curry repeated. "In terms of Rove's career as a political strategist in the fall campaign, will this lead to a new flowering of Turd Blossom?"

"I'm not going to comment," said the nonplussed New Yorker.

But the earthy image — a Texas desert flower that flourishes in manure — was a good metaphor for Rove and the GOP yesterday: Both were, at least momentarily, blooming from the political muck in which they have been mired.

….

Asked by reporters about the recent good news for Bush, Schumer was grudging. "These few developments — and, for instance, the Zarqawi one is one I welcome — don't remove the cloud of incompetence that is over the administration's head," he said. "I don't think the administration can really recover until they change their entire way of operating."

But however fervently Schumer wished away Bush's good news, Republicans sensed a shift in momentum. Sen. John Warner (Va.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, even felt comfortable enough to brush off reporters' questions about the alleged Haditha massacre. "I think the secretary [Donald H. Rumsfeld] is correct in waiting" to brief Congress, Warner said. Asked when Pentagon officials might be called before his committee, he replied: "At this time, I don't think anybody can give an estimate on that. But I'm sure that they're forthcoming; they're not reluctant to come up and provide the witnesses. Not at all."

Interesting how much coverage this is getting today, isn't it?

Actually A Smart Move

I suspect that John Droney, Jr. is a very smart political operator indeed. He publicly called for Joe Lieberman to run as an independent.

A prominent ally of U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman urged Monday that Lieberman run for re-election as an independent and not trust his career to left-leaning Democratic primary voters in August.

John F. Droney Jr., a former Democratic state chairman who helped Lieberman unseat Republican Sen. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. in 1988, said Lieberman should make his case for re-election to all voters in November.

"I think to be terrorized through the summer by an extremely small group of the Democratic Party, much less the voting population, is total insanity for a person who is a three-term senator," Droney said.

Droney's suggestion was not welcomed by the Lieberman campaign. The senator's staff has been trying to discourage speculation that Lieberman, who is more popular with Republicans and unaffiliated voters than Democrats, might run as an independent.

Why is it smart? Because I don't think for one second Droney expects or wants Lieberman to go independent. But this move highlights the out-of-state activists who are forcing this challenge in the first place, gives Lieberman a chance to deny he wants to run as an independent and gives Lieberman a chance to stake out his Democratic credentials.It also highlights the fact that extremists are trying to dictate to the party. By highlighting that, the rank and file will be more likely to come out for Lieberman. The story also gives the Lieberman camp an opening to take a hard shot at Lamont's past record.

Smith said Lieberman would not promise to support Lamont, because the businessman voted frequently with Republicans as a local official in Greenwich.

"The only public record this guy has, he voted time and again like a Republican," Smith said. "Why would we support that?"

The Lamont campaign has said that Lieberman distorted his record in an attack ad by suggesting he voted to cut education spending, when Lamont actually had voted to reduce an increase requested by the school board. Smith stood by Lieberman's ad.

"Ned has been attacking Joe Lieberman for months, now the shoe is on the other foot. Now that we're putting out the truth about his record, he doesn't like it very much," Smith said.

But a recent Quinnipiac poll highlighted a dilemma facing Lieberman: He has a shrinking, though sizable, lead over Lamont among Democrats, while the poll showed him easily winning a three-way race as an independent against Lamont and Republican Alan Schlesinger.

For the first time in decades, Connecticut is holding its statewide primary in August, when a typical turnout of 25 percent may drop even lower. If Lamont's base is energized, it could have a disproportionate voice in a primary.

"Every single weirdo in the left wing will be there," Droney said. "That's what the Lamont strategy is all about."

This was a brilliant move. And I honestly don't think the left understands how brilliant it was. They just got smoked.

TRUA Scores Big Interview Again

My blog buddy The Real Ugly American scored another really big interview, this time with Mary Katherine Ham. Rick has some good contacts, let me tell you. Mary Katherine comes across as a very intelligent, very well informed person.

Good job, Rick.

The Problem With Throwing Money At Problems

Well in today's ode to the obvious, the AP is reporting that a GAO study shows that quite a sizable sum of the money Congress threw at the Katrina disaster was misspent and that some people used fraud to obtain the money.

Well, duh. When you throw money around like a drunken sailor, there will be someone around to pick that money up. Call it a civic duty to clean up litter.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Houston divorce lawyer Mark Lipkin says he can't recall anyone paying for his services with a FEMA debit card, but congressional investigators say one of his clients did just that.

The $1,000 payment was just one example cited in an audit that concluded that up to $1.4 billion - perhaps as much as 16 percent of the billions of dollars in assistance expended after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita - was spent for bogus reasons.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency also was hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and a sex change operation, the audit found. Prison inmates, a supposed victim who used a New Orleans cemetery for a home address and a person who spent 70 days at a Hawaiian hotel all were able to get taxpayer help, according to evidence that gives a new black eye to the nation's disaster relief agency.

Obviously there was too much money in the kitty and too much political pressure to DO SOMETHING (driven by outright false media reports). This kind of result is inevitable. In fact, this kind of result is almost certain in any Federally run program of any kind whatsoever.

FEMA spokesman Aaron Walker said Tuesday that the agency, already criticized for a poor response to Katrina, makes its highest priority during a disaster "to get help quickly to those in desperate need of our assistance."

"Even as we put victims first, we take very seriously our responsibility to be outstanding stewards of taxpayer dollars, and we are careful to make sure that funds are distributed appropriately," Walker said.

FEMA said it has identified more than 1,500 cases of potential fraud after Katrina and Rita and has referred those cases to the Homeland Security Department's inspector general. The agency said it has identified $16.8 million in improperly awarded disaster relief money and has started efforts to collect the money.

The GAO said it was 95 percent confident that improper and potentially fraudulent payments were much higher - between $600 million and $1.4 billion.

I'm going to guess that the higher figure is probably going to turn out to be greatly exaggerated and that the lower figure will be closer to the truth. Is it a good thing? No. Is this going to happen again? You bet. When Congress gets it into their collective head to DO SOMETHING, this will always be the result.

UPDATE: Joe over at The Moderate Voice also has a post up about this. And we get the exact same commenter making the exact same comment!

Bush Out Of Reactive Mode?

Well, the Washington Post notes that Bush is having a pretty good run right now with quite a lot of good news. Zarqawi killed, the very media-savvy visit to Iraq, the CA-50 election and the fact that Rove is not a target of the special prosecutor any longer (if he actually ever really was). That coupled with the recent efforts to directly address many of the critics - Peter Wehner's almost regular op-eds these days are an example - means the White house may finally be shaping events instead of reacting to them.

For Bush, any progress at the moment is critical. Iraq has been at the heart of his political troubles, alienating voters weary of the war, unsettling congressional allies facing reelection this fall, and souring the public mood toward other initiatives by the administration. Even Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's legal problems stemmed from Iraq and the initial White House effort to justify the decision to invade.

With Zarqawi dead, a new Baghdad government in place and Rove freed from prosecutor's cross hairs, the White House hopes it can pivot to a new stage in which it is no longer on the defensive. In recent weeks, under new Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten, the White House has tried to do more to set an agenda, moving aggressively into the immigration debate and agreeing to join direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program under certain conditions.

"There's a sense of motion and energy and progress on different fronts," said Peter H. Wehner, White House director of strategic initiatives. "There's more of a sense that we're shaping events, rather than being controlled by them."

Those are all good things for the country as a whole, even though the Democrats will hate this turn of events. Frankly, the partisan hacking has gotten completely out of control and is really not good for the US or it's public image abroad. One other thing the Democrats will be very unhappy with is this development:

"The other team thought they'd sacked the quarterback, and even if he came back he'd limp anyway," said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a Rove confidant, who had lunch with him yesterday. "Now he's back — no limp." Switching metaphors, Norquist compared Rove to a bull that has been poked but not killed. "Not only is he in fine fettle, not only is he not wounded, he's pricked enough to be angry."

Whoopsie. If you poke a hornet nest, it's usually a good idea to have a plan to deal with the result. Or to be ready to run like heck at the very least.

Well, Now We Know

Why the Butterfly landed when she did. She'd gotten as much publicity as she could and knew the eviction was about to happen anyway.

LOS ANGELES - Sheriff's deputies evicted people from an urban community garden to make room for a warehouse Tuesday, touching off a furious protest in which actress Daryl Hannah and others climbed into a walnut tree or chained themselves to concrete-filled barrels. More than 40 people were arrested.

Authorities cut away branches and used a fire truck to bring down the "Splash" actress and another tree-sitter, who raised their fists as they were removed. Hannah was arrested.

"I'm very confident this is the morally right thing to do, to take a principled stand in solidarity with the farmers," she said by cell phone before the fire truck raised officers into the tree.

About 350 people grow produce and flowers on the 14 acres of privately owned land, in an inner-city area surrounded by warehouses and railroad tracks. The garden has been there for more than a decade, but the landowner, Ralph Horowitz, now wants to replace it with a warehouse.

It's also important to note what earlier coverage of this protest has neglected. Most of the people who used the area to grow things have already moved to new plots the city made available. This story was manipulated to make it seem the heartless landlord was evicting poor little people. In actuality, the landowner had been losing quite a lot of money on the property for many years and the "farmers" had already been offered alternatives.

Horowitz noted that the farmers were squatting on land zoned for warehouses and factories. The landowner said in a telephone interview that he was paying $25,000 to $30,000 a month in mortgage and other land costs.

"We've made, in the last three years, enough of a donation to those farmers," he said. "I just want my land back."

Horowitz accused the farmers of ingratitude, saying they had sued him and their supporters had picketed his home and office.

"I feel that the gardeners have been on the land for 14 years, almost 15 years for free. After 15 years, you say thank you," he said.

Horowitz also said that the city had provided other locations for the gardeners, and that most had left. In a statement, City Councilwoman Jan Perry also said many gardeners had moved to new garden sites.

Now we won't have any more reasons to run the picture of Joan Baez, though. Darn it.

The Death Of Truth

Lori Byrd, writing in the Examiner, has a piece up describing the death of truth in political discourse.

WASHINGTON - Many have lamented the lack of civil discourse in the world of politics today. It seems the “new tone” has too often fallen on deaf ears. Civility in political debate is frequently missing and if the current controversy over Ann Coulter’s latest book is any indication, it doesn’t appear poised to make a reappearance anytime soon.

What is a greater concern than the lack of civility, however, is the inability of many in the political arena to even agree upon the facts. Worse than the loss of civility, is that of truth.

Dan Rather and Mary Mapes argued the “fake, but accurate” defense when confronted with evidence that their 2004 pre-election story accusing the president of being AWOL 30 years earlier was based on obviously forged documents. Internet citizen journalists at Free Republic (freerepublic.com), Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com) and Power Line (powerlineblog.com) quickly deconstructed the documents upon which the 60 Minutes II producers relied.

Even as the cause of truth was served in that case, in some instances the Internet has been an environment in which even the wildest of allegations and assertions can be repeated enough times that they are picked up in other forms of media, later to become accepted as conventional wisdom.

I run into this particular phenomenon with certain commenters here. They state assertions as absolute truth on a regular basis. This is also the old Soviet propaganda technique of telling the big lie, over and over again until it is reported as fact by someone. Then that big lie becomes part of the narrative of the subject matter. It's exactly how the assertion that casualties in Vietnam were disproportionately minorities entered the Vietnam Myth. The fact that that assertion is easily proven completely false does not keep it from being restated as fact regularly.

When assertion replaces truth, language no longer has definite meaning assigned to it, and civility becomes a thing of nostalgia, the table is set for a dysfunctional debate that not only fails to educate the public, but misleads and misinforms them continually. Just as those in the new media forced those at CBS to confront the truth of their fake documents, those interested in preserving truth in our political debate have many battles to fight in the days to come.

It is easier in the age of the internet to refute the big lies more quickly and more thoroughly, but the sheer volume of false or misleading information these days is staggering. From forged memos to incorrect statistics to negative spin imparted on a positive subject, it is hard to find and correct all the problems.

We just have to try, there really is no alternative.

The UN And It’s Agenda

There appears to be a full court press going on right now by the United Nations. First it was Kofi Annan's deputy (and Soros pal) Mark Malloch Brown deriding Americans and saying we need to work more closely with the UN. Now it's the head of the (toothless) UN nuclear watchdog group, Mohamed ElBaradei. The man under who's leadership the IAEA completely missed North Korea's development of nuclear weapons. The man who's agency just didn't notice Iran building a weapons program. The man who's keen investigative skills didn't see Kahn's nuclear supermarket operating. Despite the searchlights they used at the grand opening and all the full page advertisements they took out. The man who's agency has done more to allow proliferation than anyone at any time in history.

The man who wants "international controls" on all nuclear materials and disarmament of individual nations.

For this reason, I have been calling for new approaches in a number of areas. First, a recommitment to disarmament — a move away from national security strategies that rely on nuclear weapons, which serve as a constant stimulus for other nations to acquire them. Second, tightened controls on the proliferation-sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle. By bringing multinational control to any operation that enriches uranium or separates plutonium, we can lower the risk of these materials being diverted to weapons. A parallel step would be to create a mechanism to ensure a reliable supply of reactor fuel to bona fide users, including a fuel bank under control of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The third area has been more problematic: how to deal creatively with the three countries that remain outside the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): Pakistan and India, both holders of nuclear arsenals, and Israel, which maintains an official policy of ambiguity but is believed to be nuclear-weapons-capable. However fervently we might wish it, none of these three is likely to give up its nuclear weapons or the nuclear weapons option outside of a global or regional arms control framework. Our traditional strategy — of treating such states as outsiders — is no longer a realistic method of bringing these last few countries into the fold.

Maybe if this guy had done anything approaching competent work, he might have a case. But his leadership of the agency has been one dismal failure after another. So, give up your weapons, world. Turn then over to the UN. And trust people like Mohamed ElBaradei with those weapons.

I feel safer already.