Putting This Back At The Top

I'd like as many people as possible to remember Benjamin Slaven, so I am putting this link back at the top.

A New Blog

I just found a new blog that tickles my fancy. It's about a subject near and dear to my heart. It's dedicated to someone I have had occasion to blog about repeatedly.

Murtha Must Go.

The title would be self-explanatory. There are a number of contributers to this group effort, so by all means, go and check them out.

Clouds

Reinvention

Well, at least some people in the Democratic party are beginning to realize that they have no real message. Aside from hating George Bush, their idea well is pretty dry. And as much as the netroots like to claim they are the future, cooler heads realize that a hard left, anti-war, socialist agenda will not work in this country with the vast majority. So someone is trying to find a new direction and a new message.

 On Monday, three veteran party strategists — William Galston, Stan Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira — launched a Web site ( http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/ ) with the goal of generating fact-based, empirically tested theories that might help Democrats resolve their policy differences and win more elections.

Yesterday saw another launch party, this time for Democracy, a quarterly journal that also will be available online ( http://www.democracyjournal.org/ ). The magazine will be edited by Andrei Cherny and Kenneth Baer, two younger veterans of recent party wars. Their goal is do for the Democrats what journals such as Public Interest did for conservatives and Republicans decades ago, which is to bring forward big ideas to challenge what they regard as the tired thinking that grips Democratic politicians.

On Thursday, NDN (formerly the New Democrat Network) will convene its annual conference. NDN, founded by Simon Rosenberg, has recently been in the forefront of moving beyond differences between centrists, liberals and the new world of blogs and net-roots activists, all with an eye toward tipping the political balance back in a Democratic direction.

Well, it will be interesting. The old guard, as represented by the likes of Ted "Fossilized Liver" Kennedy will not relinquish power easily. The newest of the new Kozite-backed people have not shown they can be elected (0 for 20 and counting).

Now while the Democrats obviously welcome many diverse opinions just from John Kerry alone**, it remains to be seen if they can re-formulate a message that will actually get them elected.

** Shamelessly stolen line from commenter Santay – thanks for the great line!

Kosgate?

Well, there's suddenly a lot of noise in the right blogosphere about a leaked email from Kos to a lot of top-ranked lefty bloggers. Frankly, I haven't written a thing about the allegations that there may have been some sort of quid pro quo in who Kos' partner took consulting fees from and who Kos then endorsed. Frankly if there was such an arrangement, it sounds like old fashioned backroom politics. Not exactly cutting edge.

The email is a different story. If lefty bloggers are indeed following Kos' directions to starve the story of oxygen by not writing about it, those bloggers may damage themselves in the long run.

For the record, I am not on any super-duper top secret mailing lists. I'm not sure if I'd join a club that would have me as a member, to paraphrase Groucho. Nor do I get – or would I accept, for that matter – direction on what to blog about and what to ignore.

It speaks volumes about the sort of people who do, doesn't it?

Santorum Press Release

Senator Rick Santorum made the following press release today:

June 21, 2006

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, joined Congressman Peter Hoekstra, (R-MI-2), Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, today to make a major announcement regarding the release of newly declassified information that proves the existence of chemical munitions in Iraq since 2003. The information was released by the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, and contained an unclassified summary of analysis conducted by the National Ground Intelligence Center. In March, Senator Santorum began advocating for the release of these documents to the American public.

“The information released today proves that weapons of mass destruction are, in fact, in Iraq,” said Senator Santorum. “It is essential for the American people to understand that these weapons are in Iraq. I will continue to advocate for the complete declassification of this report so we can more fully understand the complete WMD picture inside Iraq.”

The following are the six key points contained in the unclassified overview:

• Since 2003 Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent.

• Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq’s pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist.

• Pre-Gulf War Iraqi chemical weapons could be sold on the black market. Use of these weapons by terrorists or insurgent groups would have implications for Coalition forces in Iraq. The possibility of use outside Iraq cannot be ruled out.

• The most likely munitions remaining are sarin and mustard-filled projectiles.

• The purity of the agent inside the munitions depends on many factors, including the manufacturing process, potential additives, and environmental storage conditions. While agents degrade over time, chemical warfare agents remain hazardous and potentially lethal.

• It has been reported in open press that insurgents and Iraqi groups desire to acquire and use chemical weapons.

500 artillery rounds is a large amount and would have cause significant casualties if they had been used.

H/T Captain Ed

101st Blog Of The Day

Today, my mission to visit one member of the fighting 101st each day led me to Fausta's Blog. Fausta is blogging about Londonistan, the Comoros Islands and quite a lot of other topics.

Is It Just Me?

Or is it taking a long time to get to the beach?

Poor Planning

The Old Homestead Steakhouse in Florida has not, up until now, had a hamburger on it's menu. So, when it finally decided it was time, they went a bit overboard. Mixing prime American with Japanese Kobe and fine Argentinian beef, the massive 20 ounce burger comes garnished with all sorts of organic greens and rare mushrooms.

And it only costs $125.

Boca Raton Mayor Steven Abrams could barely speak between bites as he devoured the 20-ounce, $100 hamburger billed as the "beluga caviar of sandwiches."

"Heaven on a bun," restaurant owner Marc Sherry said.

The burger debuted Tuesday at the restaurant in the Boca Raton Resort and Club, where a membership costs $40,000 and an additional $3,600 a year.

Now, even though it's not likely they read Blue Crab Boulevard, we still say they missed a real opportunity to get a very reasonably priced supply of meat. We think that's poor planning on their part.

Profitable Undertakings

Well, now that the Midwest isn't limited to corn and beans any longer, we're formulating a plan. With the huge profit windfall we expect from the bumper sugar cane, citrus and banana harvests, we're optioning all the real estate we can get our hands on. That way, when the ocean reaches us, we'll already have cornered the market on beach front mega-homes!

And that is the high quality reporting you can expect to come out of this nonsensical ABC method of developing a "news" story.

UPDATE: Other tales of misery and woe: Protein Wisdom, Brainster, Southern Appeal, NRO Media Blog, A Blog For All,

Murder Charges

Murder charges will be filed against the six Marines and one Navy corpsman being held in the Camp Pendleton brig. A formal announcement will be made later today.

The charges include murder, kidnapping, conspiracy, making false official statements and larceny, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the charges have not yet been announced.

The incident took place in the town of Hamdania and is a separate case from the November 19 killing of 24 civilians in Haditha in which other Marines are suspected.

Military criminal investigators examined whether the servicemen fatally shot a 52-year-old disabled Iraqi man in the face, then planted a rifle and a shovel next to his body to make it appear he was an insurgent placing a roadside bomb.

The eight troops have been held in pretrial confinement at the Camp Pendleton prison in California since May 24. The Marines plan to hold a news conference at Camp Pendleton at 4 p.m. (1 p.m. PDT) to announce the charges.

Please remember that they are still presumed innocent.

UPDATE: The charges have been formally announced by the Marine Corps.

UPDATE: New York Times story here.

Foot Dragging

Big surprise, isn't it? Iran is dragging it's feet and won't respond to the incentive package it was presented until August. The year wasn't specified by the raving loon Iranian president.

"We are studying the proposals. Hopefully, we will present our views about the package by mid-August," Ahmadinejad told a crowd in western Iran in a speech broadcast live on state television.

Speaking at an annual U.S.- European Union summit in Vienna, Austria, Bush said that the mid-August timetable "seems like an awfully long time" to wait for an answer.

"It shouldn't take the Iranians that long to analyze what's a reasonable deal," Bush said.

The offer, presented by European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana during a June 6 visit, provides a range of incentives for Iran to impose a moratorium on uranium enrichment, a process that can produce material for nuclear generators or for weapons.

If Iran rejects the deal, Bush has warned that it can expect U.N. Security Council action and progressively stronger political and economic sanctions. The U.S. and Europe are pressing for a quick answer.

Is anyone really surprised by this? The Iranians have never had any intention to negotiate in good faith.

Tastes Like Chicken!

More must-read news out of Turkey today. In an urgent warning to residents of Ankara, the Environment Minister has advised residents to stop eating shish kebab. At least until the python is found. The 20-foot long, 154 pound deli snack was apparently stolen from the Ankara zoo, possibly with inside help. (Gee, ya think? It's not like that particular reptile could be hidden under your coat).

The python, which is six meters (20 feet) long and weighs about 70 kilograms (154 pounds), has been missing since June 10, but the zoo management alerted the authorities only Monday, triggering a criminal investigation into the incident, newspapers reported.

"I am responsible for the protection of animal rights…. My biggest concern is the possibility that the python might have become shish-kebab," Environment Minister Osman Pepe was quoted as saying by the mass-circulation daily Hurriyet.

"I advise citizens not to eat shish kebab until the python is found," he said, presumably tongue-in-cheek.

Meanwhile, word is that Krazy Kemal's Kebab Korner is running a special on chicken shish kebob. While supplies last, of course.

The Silence

Townhall columnist Jeff Emanuel has a piece up that points out something that should be rather obvious to anyone. The "Human Rights" activists have not mentioned one word about the atrocities carried out against Americans. Instead, they focus on attacking America at every opportunity.

Interestingly silent on this and other atrocities carried out by the insurgents in Iraq are the “human rights” groups who seem to spend every day accusing the United States of torture, war crimes, and various human rights violations.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has called the Iraq war “illegal,” and John Pace, former UN chief of Human Rights for Iraq, has said that human rights conditions are “as bad now as they were under Saddam,” but was it America that filled mass graves with hundreds of thousands of murdered Iraqi civilians?

Last month, Human Rights Watch again accused the US of “brutalizing Muslim suspects in the name of the war on terror,” but how many times have Americans strapped bombs to their own chests and purposely detonated themselves in a large crowd of civilians?

Amnesty International’s website highlights America’s use of “torture or other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” against terrorist captives, but how many prisoners—Muslim or otherwise—have Americans brutally beheaded?

Despite the immediate attempts of the anti-war Left to make this murder of American soldiers into an election-year political issue, the gradually stabilizing situation on the ground—especially evidenced by the decreasing frequency of effective insurgent attacks, combined with the increasing desperation of their methods—almost inarguably proves that a turning point in Iraq has been reached.

He's quite right. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch can't be dragged away from their total, laser-like focus on condemning the US and Israel for all the evil in the world. Isn't it about time we stated ignoring such obviously biased sources and quit listening to them as legitimate?

Furious Spin

This is a very interesting article indeed. Although the reporter spins it furiously in favor of John Murtha, I see definite signs that he is in trouble. The reporter quotes returning soldiers who support Murtha all through the first few paragraphs, but then comes this part:

Doubts about Iraq have surfaced in the region. A Quinnipiac University Poll released Wednesday found that 25 percent in southwest Pennsylvania said all troops should be withdrawn from Iraq, while 38 percent in Pittsburgh and its surrounding suburbs said they should all be withdrawn.

This is a minority view. Spin it how you like, Murtha may have worked himself into a corner on this issue. Still more important facts come later:

His criticism has angered some in the district. Unopposed in 2004, Murtha has a GOP rival this time — Diana Irey, a Washington County commissioner.

Ruth Ann Biesinger-Sliko, 55, a physical education teacher who came to see a fellow teacher and six of her former students return from Iraq, said Murtha has lost her vote because of his negativity about the war.

"I think that makes the guys feel terrible when he starts, you know, bashing. I think you need to support the guys," Biesinger-Sliko said. "I think it's created a lot of bad feelings for the people whose families are over there."

….

Not everyone in the district is happy with Murtha's outspokenness or higher political profile. The congressman has said if Democrats capture control of the House, he will seek the job of majority leader. Murtha also plans to speak at Democratic meetings in New Hampshire and Florida in the next few weeks.

A banner proclaiming, "Welcome Home Soldiers: Got-R-Done," greeted the troops when they returned. Many of the soldiers declined to be interviewed. Or, when asked about Murtha, said they didn't know enough to have an opinion.

Tom Geiger, a 79-year-old World War II veteran, said he thinks Murtha is "50 percent right and 50 percent wrong."

"Maybe they should have searched a little bit more" for weapons of mass destruction, Geiger said. "But once you're into it, you're stuck with it."

No matter that the reporter downplayed this, there is a strong anti-Murtha sentiment building. Will it be enough to send him into retirement? It very well could be judging from those poll numbers. As the reporter states, this is an area that has sent a lot of people into the military. That means a lot of those men and women support the troops. Murtha is not doing that, no matter how he protests otherwise. He is endangering and attempting to demoralize the troops.

Help Diana Irey send Murtha home.