Body Slam

John Podhoretz takes aim at the Iraq Study Group of James Baker. And he is very, very harsh, indeed. He heaps plenty of scorn on the "realism" of the group and takes more than a little exception to the leaking business as usual that the old hands at appeasement offer as wisdom.

December 1, 2006 — YES, it's been quite a week for the 10 members of the Iraq Study Group, the committee formed last spring to offer recommendations on a path forward in Iraq.

They had a wonderfully invigorating leak session the other day with The New York Times, which was the first recipient of the group's key top-level save-America recommendation. Co-chairmen James "Is There An Arab Dictator Nearby Whose Butt I Can Kiss" Baker and Lee "Yes, I'm Still Alive" Hamilton didn't even bother to pretend to brief the president or key lawmakers first.

The president could wait his turn. After all, this is the Iraq Study Group we're talking about here, buddy. Even the mighty Times was probably kept waiting for its leak, since the only person who could not be kept waiting was Annie Leibovitz, celebrity photographer nonpareil.

As Dana Milbank reports in The Washington Post, on Monday the group's "co-chairmen, James Baker and Lee Hamilton, found time . . . to pose for an Annie Leibovitz photo shoot for Men's Vogue."

The value of Annie Leibovitz's pictorial scoop might have been reduced somewhat when the president scornfully consigned the Iraq Study Group to the ash-heap of history yesterday with a single dismissive sentence during his press conference in Jordan: "This business about 'graceful exit' just simply has no realism to it whatsoever."

Baker, Hamilton and their crew of old Washington hands (and I mean old, like Metheuselah-level old) are recommending a "gradual pullback" of American troops but without a timetable. That basically translates into a nice, long, slow defeat - the "graceful exit" of which the president spoke so harshly.

Do take the time to read it all, Podhoretz delivers a body slam to this group that the media has imbued with Godlike powers. But Podhoretz correctly points out that the Godlike ones have no clothes whatsoever.

And no good ideas. At all.

UPDATE: Others: Let Freedom Ring, Gina Cobb, Anchor Rising, Ed Driscoll,

Amateur Experts

The year is 1987 and a self-described treasure hunter is slogging through a Kansas corn field listening to the sounds coming from a magnetometer he carries. Suddenly, the sounds become frantic and he knew he'd found something important. Twenty years on now, the importance is still being discovered a bit at a time. For what David Hawley had found, buried 30 feet below that field, was the Missouri River steamboat, the Arabia. On September 5, 1856, the Arabia had hit a massive snag - a tree trunk - in the river and had gone down in a very short time. Miraculously, everyone on board escaped. But the steam packet and its entire cargo had gone to the bottom of the muddy Missouri. Hawley and his family went from being treasure hunters to historians overnight.

Inspired by tales of lost consignments of gold and valuable cargoes of whiskey, Hawley, his father, Bob, and younger brother, Greg, had searched for years for wrecks of sunken Missouri River steamboats, nearly 300 of which have been documented. By 1987, they had little more than old timbers to show for their efforts and, in one disappointing instance, a cargo of waterlogged salt pork. The Hawleys considered themselves treasure hunters who would sell what they found for whatever profit they could make. But the steamboat David Hawley stumbled onto that July afternoon would transform them into archaeologists, and in turn, preservationists, curators and fundraisers for a new museum. It would also enlarge historians' understanding of the American frontier and the era when the paddle wheel was queen of the Western waters.

From their research, the Hawleys knew that Arabia had been launched in 1853 on the Monongahela River in Pennsylvania; newspapers of the time described the boat as a "handsome and staunch packet…furnished throughout with the latest accommodations and improvements for the comforts of the passengers and conveyance of freight." They knew, too, that Arabia carried Mormon settlers on their way to Utah and soldiers to forts in distant Montana. Arabia had even played a role in the battle for "Bleeding Kansas," when pro-slavery men discovered crates of rifles destined for abolitionists in the ship's hold and nearly lynched the passengers who had brought them aboard. The Hawleys had also come across an eyewitness account of Arabia's last moments. "There was a wild scene on board," recalled a survivor named Abel Kirk. "The boat went down till the water came over the deck, and the boat keeled over on one side. The chairs and stools were tumbled about and many of the children nearly fell into the water." Amazingly, considering that Arabia sank in less than ten minutes, all 130 passengers, and the crew, survived.

Bob Hawley, 77, calls his clan "just a run-of-the-mill blue-collar family," one that owned a refrigerator business in Independence, Missouri. Hawley's ancestors went West to join up with the first settlers in Utah. "My great-great-grandfather was told he had to get himself another wife," says Bob, "but he just couldn't make himself do it, so he left Utah in the dead of night." From his father, Gerry, a blacksmith, Bob inherited mechanical ingenuity and a stubborn perfectionism that would serve the Hawleys well in their quest to salvage Arabia.

Go read the whole thing, it is a fascinating story. My wife and I have visited the Arabia Museum and can highly recommend it as something well worth seeing. Here is the Arabia Museum's website.

A Special Post Just For My Son

Here's an item I'm posting just for my son. 600 people have come down with a gastrointestinal illness after eating at a very popular eatery in the city of Syracuse, New York.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - At least 600 people came down with a gastrointestinal illness after eating at a popular biker bar and restaurant, health officials said Friday…..

Some were sickened after eating at the restaurant, while others became ill after being exposed to those who had, health officials said.

The most common symptoms include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps and chills lasting 12 to 48 hours.

They have ruled out any bacterial source and believe that whatever it is is viral in nature. Why did I post this for my so?

Because the name of the restaurant where this occurred is the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. It's his favorite restaurant in the whole wide world.

We Are So Proud!

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard had absolutely no idea of the sheer power and reach of our little blog. But lo and behold, it turns out that the British Examination Board that produces textbooks for school use actually gets their scientific information about animals from none other than the Crabitat!

A new science textbook for schools claims that polar bears eat penguins, even though they live in separate hemispheres.

The book, authorised by one of England's three exam boards, contains other errors, including that African elephants get drunk on rotten fruit, a theory dismissed by academics.

The howlers were found in GCSE books and computer resources produced by the educational publishers Nelson Thornes and endorsed by the AQA board. Teaching packs cost schools £1,700 each.

Peter Cotgreave, the chairman of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, a pressure group lobbying to improve science standards, said: "It is inevitable that mistakes are going to creep in but to say that polar bears and penguins live together is astonishing. It reflects a loss of respect for science."

We're so proud! And they're sooooooooo gullible.

With A Whimper

John Kerry has announced he will not decide whether to run for the Democratic nomination until late spring. Associates say he is stunned over the fallout of his "botched joke", proving exactly how inept a politician he really is.

WASHINGTON — Senator John F. Kerry's election-eve "botched joke" about the war in Iraq — and the fierce denunciations his comments drew from fellow Democrats — has led him to reevaluate whether to mount a run for the presidency in 2008 and has led him to delay an announcement about his decision, according to Kerry associates.

The Massachusetts Democrat is now leaning toward waiting until late spring before declaring his intentions, even as other candidates jump into the race and begin building organizing and fund-raising teams in early-primary states. Before the joke derailed his comeback, Kerry had signaled that he would decide whether to run by the end of January.

Kerry — who had methodically resurrected his political standing after a tough loss to President Bush in 2004 — was stunned by the swift, angry reaction to his Oct. 30 statement that underachieving students would end up "stuck in Iraq." Aides and friends say the senator was particularly stung by the fact that so many Democrats had joined Republicans in rebuking him.

The incident laid bare to the senator the lingering skepticism and resentment of him two years after he failed to unseat Bush, according to Kerry advisers who spoke on condition of anonymity.

And so it appears, at least for now, that John Kerry will finally fade back into being an obscure Senator from a deep blue state. The national aspirations fade away with a whimper, "Nobody understands me!". We'll miss him, though. He was so easy to beat on.

Bad, Santa, Bad

Some holiday bad cheer for you today: bad Santas in the news. Item: The Sieg Heil Santa® was not a big hit in Germany this year.

Josef Lange, a spokesman for the Rossmann chain that has 1,200 outlets, told Reuters Friday the figures depicting Father Christmas with his right arm stiffly upright toward the sky and holding a sack in his left hand upset some customers.

"We were astonished by the reaction," Lange said. "It looks like he's just pointing up to the sky and we were surprised that anyone saw the so-called 'Hitler salute' in that. But we responded and had the entire inventory removed and destroyed."

A right jolly old elf, apparently. No word on if they wore armbands.

Item: A beer distributer in Maine is suing the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement in Federal court. It seems the bureau refused to allow the sale of Santa's Butt.

In a complaint filed in federal court, Shelton Brothers accuses the Maine Bureau of Liquor Enforcement of censorship for denying applications for labels for Santa's Butt Winter Porter and two other beers it wants to sell in Maine.

The dispute recalls a similar squabble last year when Connecticut told Shelton Brothers it had problems with its Seriously Bad Elf ale.

"Last year it was elves. This year it's Santa. Maybe next year it'll be reindeer," said Daniel Shelton, owner of the company in Belchertown, Mass.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday, contends the state's action violates the First Amendment by censoring artistic expression.

But the state says it's within its rights. The label with Santa might appeal to children, said Maine State Police Lt. Patrick Fleming. The other two labels are considered inappropriate because they show bare-breasted women.

…

The label for the English-made Santa's Butt Winter Porter features a rear view of a beer-drinking Santa Claus sitting atop a barrel. The beer's name refers not only to Santa's ample backside, but also to the barrel. In England, brewers once used a large barrel called a "butt" to store beer.

Maine also denied label applications for Les Sans Culottes, a French ale, and Rose de Gambrinus, a Belgian fruit beer.

Les Sans Culottes' label is illustrated with detail from Eugene Delacroix's 1830 painting "Liberty Leading the People," which hangs in the Louvre and once appeared on the 100-franc bill. Rose de Gambrinus shows a bare-breasted woman in a watercolor painting commissioned by the brewery.

Ho, ho, ho, indeed. No ho's allowed in Maine. Shelton Brother's website is here. They have a number of beers with attitudes.

Fantasy Is Not A Strategy

Tigerhawk looks at the latest fantasy approach to dealing with the Middle East: If the US withdraws, Saudi Arabia steps up and fights a proxy war with Iran. Simultaneously, the Saudis flood the oil markets to drive prices down to the point that Iran collapses economically. Lovely ideas. Tigerhawk throws cold water on the ideas by pointing out the fallacies in the reasoning.

First, the last thing we want is the Saudis funding more Sunni Islamic proxy warriors. We thought that was a great idea in Afghanistan in the 1980s — and it may have been worth it even in retrospect, if you believe Afghanistan brought down the Soviet Union a decade or two earlier than it would have fallen otherwise — but the blowback is the war we have now. The only thing worse than a wealthy, corrupt, monarchial Saudi Arabia spending all its excess money on yachts and mosques in Pakistan is the same country arming and training mujahideen. What will they do when Iran is sufficiently contained? Find somebody else to blow up, that's what. The problem of unemployed soldiers is a famous one in history, and Americans (particularly, I'm sorry to say, on the right) seem oblivious to it. Americans are blind to this problem because we are just about the only people on earth who both willingly go to war and delight in returning home to an ordinary life when the war is over. For most soldiers in most places through most of history, there is no better ordinary life to return to.

Second, this is another version of "offshore balancing" in the Persian Gulf, the failed approach that led us to support Saddam Hussein against Iran in a barbaric war, triggered the "tanker war", brought us into Saudi Arabia when Saddam counterbalanced his way into Kuwait in 1990, and led to the twelve year "warm war" against Iraq between 1991 and 2003, during which we enriched the worst people in the region with sanctions, flew 10,000 sorties a year against Iraq, bombed it far more often than Democrats are willing to admit, and still could not bring Saddam Hussein to heel. In all of these ways, offshore balancing — the failed strategy of favoring stability over freedom in the region — led to September 11. Whatever the other failures of the Bush administration's foreign policy, this insight remains true. We must not allow our stress over Iraq to push us back into offshore balancing, which is where I fear James Baker is going to lead our president….

Read it, it is well worth taking the time. The problem with the Baker group is that it appears to be heading right back to the failed policies that brought us to where we are right now. Those policies did not work then, they will not work now. But this proposal does show one thing when you think about it: If the Bush administration was as tight with the Saudis as the left tries to paint it, why hasn't an oil war already started? A 50% drop in crude prices would effectively kneecap both the Iranians and (T)Hugo Chavez, wouldn't it?

The Real Agenda?

David Warren looks at the media circus the Pope Benedict XVI generated this week by visiting Turkey. And he points out that despite the media "framing" of the story, the trip was not at all what the press would have us all believe.

People believe what they want to believe, which is one of the reasons the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” continues to enjoy a good circulation. That, and the fact that this Russian-fabricated late 19th-century blood libel against the Jews has been big-budget dramatized on state television in Egypt and many other Muslim countries. Turkish television recently showed a massively popular dramatic series in which basic elements from the Protocols were recast, as an “exposé” of baby-eating U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

It is worth remembering such things when we consider the possibilities for “dialogue” between cultures. It is also worth considering with what great difficulty the West was raised out of the barbaric welter of superstition and paranoia, and how easily we could slump back into it. I look, for instance, at the garbage that is being studied and taught in the politically-correct English departments of our universities, and am reminded that we are ourselves on the skids. The ability to distinguish even between what is sane, and insane, is slipping away.

But let us return to Constantinople (as it was called through the centuries before it fell to the Ottoman conquest in 1453). It remains the seat of the Ecumenical Patriarch, of Eastern Christendom.

The Pope’s visit to Turkey was primarily for the purpose of meeting this Patriarch, Bartholomew I. It was intended secondarily as the latest Vatican act of outreach to the Islamic world. The international media managed to frame it as an act of contrition for remarks Pope Benedict made in Bavaria, touching on Islam, which were twisted viciously out of context, at first by the BBC. Their coverage has been a kind of death-watch, in anticipation of the possibility the Pope might be assassinated.

Warren notes that the press has reported the words, yet missed the point entirely (like we've never seen that before). An outreach to heal the rift between the Eastern and Western church may very well have been what the Pope was trying to do all along. All the rest is sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Siege

Hezbollah continues to lay siege upon the government building in Lebanon where the president and some ministers are. The main roads are blockaded by "tent cities" that are not, as Gateway Pundit points out, typical.

 This is definitely not your typical tent city!

No freedom songs… No all night poetry… No hot democracy babes hanging out late…

Hezbollah thugs are now blocking the roads to government offices where the Lebanese leaders are holed up. The thugs promise to stay put until the government falls.

You may have noticed the absence of Hezbollah flags at the protest on Friday…
The BBC shows what happened to one protester who went against the pre-planned protest rules and started waving a yellow Hezbollah flag… He was whisked away by Hezbollah marshals!

Just thugs in a tent. Want to bet there are armed thugs in the tents? AFP is reporting that it is a siege as well.

"The massive demonstration… has given Lebanon one of the most difficult tests that the country has known in a long while," warned the pro-Syrian Al-Akhbar daily on Saturday.

The leftist As-Safir daily noted that the protest did not contribute to "open any slight door to resolve the political crisis which remains in deadlock".

The Siniora government, which has received strong public backing from Western and some Arab states, pledged not to bow to the opposition led by the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

"The Syrian-Iranian camp, led by Hezbollah, has begun to implement a plot for a coup" in Lebanon with the demonstration and attempts to besiege the Siniora cabinet, the anti-Syrian Al-Mustqabal daily said Saturday.

Lebanon must not fall to Syria. But Syria is emboldened by the Baker commission because Baker has a history of selling out Lebanon, of course.

Penguin Secrets

Scientists are mystified by the abilities of emperor penguins. It seems that researchers put small data recorders on the birds and discovered that the penguins can dive to a depth of 1,800 feet and stay down there in the depths of the sea for up to 20 minutes.

When emperor penguins dive below the Antarctic sea ice in search of food, they can descend five times as deep as a human and can swim on a single breath for up to 20 minutes. Researchers are trying to find out how they manage these incredible feats to potentially help improve surgical procedures and anesthesia.

Emperor penguins are the tallest and heaviest species of penguin. During their harsh life cycle they dwell on ice and march up to 100 miles from their mating grounds to dive into frigid waters to feed on krill and fish.

Using small devices called time-depth recorders, researchers found that the birds could dive deeper than 1,800 feet—the deepest a human can dive unassisted is just over 300 feet.

The penguins "dove much deeper than we ever thought they would,” said Paul Ponganis, a physiologist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography.

Researchers aren’t sure how emperors can descend so deep without developing decompression sickness, or the bends. “That’s probably the big question about tolerating depth,” Ponganis told LiveScience.

Of course, those of us who are up to speed on the Animal Uprising know what the clueless scientists do not. There is a simple, yet terrifying, reason why they can dive so deep and stay down so long. The penguins have submarines.

No Fidel, Parade Goes On

Cubans have given up hope of seeing Fidel Castro in public after he failed to show up at a military parade held in honor of his 80th birthday.

Many Cubans still hoped that Castro would make at least a brief appearance during a huge military parade in Havana on Saturday morning to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. The commemoration culminates five days of celebrations for Castro's 80th birthday, but he has yet to make an appearance.

The Cuban leader turned 80 on Aug. 13 but delayed the celebrations to give him time to recover from surgery two weeks earlier for intestinal bleedings. He has not been seen in public since July 26, and few details about his condition have been released by Cuba's communist government.

Maybe the world will get a Christmas present.

The Diasappearing Hunter

Steve Tuttle writes an interesting article on the declining number of hunters in Newsweek. Hunting was once a way of life in America but has been in decline for a number of years. What gets lost when the tradition enters a long twilight?

There aren't that many boys today who grew up the way I did—kids who are willing to put down their Gameboys, pick up a rifle and head out into the field. Hunting in America has entered a long twilight. The number of license holders—roughly 15 million through 2004—has actually shrunk by about 2 million people since 1982, when the population was 230 million (versus 300 million today). Since 1990, the number of license holders in Massachusetts has dropped by 50,000, or 40 percent; in California since 1980 the number has fallen by almost half, from 540,000 to 300,000. In Michigan, there were 1.2 million licensed hunters in 1992—but fewer than 850,000 in 2004. Hunters are aging: about seven in 10 are older than 35 (in 1980, only four in 10 were over 35). The reasons for hunting's decline are pretty basic: fewer fields and streams and hills full of game to hunt (Census data show that urban America more than doubled in acreage from 1960 to 1990); more restrictions and lawsuits; more videogames and diversions to keep junior (and his dad) on the couch.

….

Hunting where I grew up was a ritual of male bonding, but the whole community was caught up in it, boys and girls alike. School was let out the first day of hunting season in late November. On opening morning you could hear the shots popping off in the distance, one after another, all day long. The population of my little rural county swelled by thousands (my school friends and I called the city slickers in their fancy new gear "Fudds," as in Elmer). Men grew beards and didn't shave them until they got their first buck. Men who shot and missed a deer had to cut their flannel shirttails off—or their buddies did it for them. (In rural Scotland, ancestral home of many of these Appalachian men, young boys still have grouse blood smeared on their faces after their first kill in the field.) You learned to skin and eat what you killed. I hated gutting and cleaning animals and always wondered if I were the only one, and was happy to see my grandfather, Colvin, gag as he dressed a deer. He had been a veteran of Omaha Beach, so it gave me cover.

But more importantly, some interesting things are starting to happen as the number of hunters declines:

Judging from polls, most people are at least vaguely supportive of hunters—as long as they (and their guns) stay far away. Protective of bunnies and Bambis, suburbanites increasingly restrict hunting from getting anywhere near their mini-mansions. The overabundant wildlife, in turn, attracts coyotes and more aggressive predators. Children have been mauled by bears who wander into backyards, and in Florida recently, three women were killed by alligators. In March, a coyote was seen in Central Park, in the middle of Manhattan.

Man took the place of many of the top predators, of course. As fewer hunt, nature will seek balance by increasing the number of other predators. Unfortunately, that means those animals will also get closer to humans and become more dangerous. As Tuttle points out, hunters are among the most fierce of conservationists, pouring millions of dollars into habitat conservation and reconstruction.

Questionable Turtles And Illicit Frogs

New York is cracking down on a booming new trade in, as the article calls it, exotic food stuffs. It seems that in certain ethnic food shops some unusual things turn up when inspectors take a look around. Smoked rodent, cow lungs, armadillos, turtles, lizards - oh, pretty much anything you can think of. And almost all of it is downright illegal.

NEW YORK - When a food safety inspector walked into a market in Queens, he noticed the store had an interesting special posted on its front window: 12 beefy armadillos. In Brooklyn, inspectors found 15 pounds of iguana meat at a West Indian market and 200 pounds of cow lungs for sale at another market. At a West African grocery in Manhattan, the store was selling smoked rodent meat from a refrigerated display case. An inspector quickly seized a couple pounds of it.

All of it was headed for the dinner table. All of it was also illegal.

Authorities say the discoveries are part of a larger trend in which markets across New York are buying meat and other foods from unregulated sources and selling them to an immigrant population accustomed to more exotic fare.

State regulators have responded by stepping up enforcement, confiscating 65 percent more food through September than they did in all of 2005.

The seizures also cast a spotlight on the eating habits of this ethnically diverse city, where everything from turtles and fish paste to frogs and duck feet make their way onto people's plates.

"At one time or another, we've probably seen about everything," said Joseph Corby, director of the state's Division of Food Safety and Inspection.

It's a fascinating little story about immigrants bringing some of their unusual cuisine tastes to the US. Most of the odd food will remain illegal, I'm sure. But some of it may eventually win government approval - some already has. But it must come from a licensed facility. As demand grows, some people are likely to seek out those licenses. So turtles, frogs, iguana and armadillos can already be legally sold so long as they are properly processed. There just are not many places doing it just yet.

The other reason for the crackdown, of course, is that it is cutting into the supply of mystery meat for school cafeterias.