Gerald R. Ford, 1913-2006 - Rest In Peace

President Gerald R. Ford, 93, has passed away. The only unelected president in American history, Ford was a better man than the media portrayed him while he was in office. His biography is here. I'm proud that I voted for him when he ran for (re) election against Jimmy Carter.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," Mrs. Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."

The statement did not say where Ford died or list a cause of death. Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

He was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

Ford was an accidental president, Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straight-forward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

He took office minutes after Nixon flew off into exile and declared "our long national nightmare is over." But he revived the debate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

Rest in peace, Jerry. You did what you could with a bad situation.

UPDATE: Huge reaction in the blogosphere. Others: Althouse, Outside The Beltway, Liberal Values, Wake up America, Matthew Yglesias, Democracy in America, Dean's World, The Democratic Daily, Bark Bark Woof Woof, PoliBlog, Gay Patriot, Michelle Malkin,  MyDD, The Political Pit Bull, Macsmind, The Talking Dog, Polimom, Gun Toting Liberal, Blogs of War, Pundit Guy,  bRight & Early, The Glittering Eye, Riehl World View, Scared Monkeys, The Jawa Report, Shot in the Dark, The Strata-Sphere, Donklephant, Redstate, Jules Crittenden, Wizbang, Hot Air, Don Surber, A Blog For All, Balloon Juice,

Australian Diggers Called To Arms!

Australian soldiers (aka "Diggers") May be called into battle within Australia itself, if one group gets its way. There is an invasion of biblical proportions going on down under and the citizenry needs help. The army of invaders is making steady progress, killing native Australians by the thousands as they advance.

Freaking toads.

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Environmentalists have asked Australia's military to wage war on cane toads, which have spread across the country's north in near-plague proportions.

The toads, introduced in a batch of 101 from Hawaii in 1935 in a failed bid to control native cane beetles, have spread 3,000 km (1,900 miles) from northeast Queensland to Darwin in Australia's tropical north. There are now more than 200 million.

"We need as many people on the ground as we can possibly get, and if the military can work out strategies for controlling toads on their ground, well that's fine with us," Frog Watch spokesman Ian Morris told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio on Wednesday.

Cane toads are one of Australia's worst environmental mistakes, ranking alongside the catastrophic introduction of rabbits.

The spread of the toads, whose skin is poisonous, has led to dramatic declines in populations of native snakes, goanna lizards and quolls. A quoll is a cat-sized marsupial.

Killing the hardy toads with anything from golf clubs to air rifles has become a northern Australian pastime, and their carcasses are turned into comic tourist ornaments and fertiliser.

Now a smart operator would start a toad golf league instead of calling in the troops. If done correctly, you could get people to pay you to drive toads all day. Oh, and if you were wondering, there are loons in Australia, too:

A Northern Territory lawmaker called in 2005 for a legislated national attack on cane toads, but withdrew the demand in the face of criticism from animal rights groups.

Mustn't kill the things that are killing off all your native species. Wait! I have an idea! Organize a "closest to the animal rights activist" toad driving competition. You'll make bazillions! I fully expect royalties. Foster's is good.

Why Do We Bother?

One of the things this blog has been very hard on is the media in general and media accuracy specifically. I've mentioned before that if you take a subject you are a real expert in and read a media report on that subject, you will be shaking your head in short order. Because you will know they have got some - or a lot - of the facts wrong. Then you'll turn to the next page and read about something else and assume they are right.

Uh, sure.

So we come to this gem from no less than ABC News.

An attack on French soil is likely to happen in the next few weeks or months, according to a senior French foreign intelligence official, who said today that they are on the highest state of alert since 9/11.

This comes amidst news reports of a terrorist plot during the holiday season to strike the Channel tunnel, or Chunnel, that runs between London and Paris. (Emphasis added.)

The "Chunnel" runs between Folkestone, Kent in England to Coquelles near Calais in northern France. I took a screenshot, because I suspect they'll get around to changing that when enough people laugh at them. And it is so freaking hard to look these troublesome facts up on the interwebby tubes these days. (They have a helpful map. Maybe they could provide another. That way ABC News could find their collective butt with both hands.)

Shocking!

Researchers from the University of Washington have come up with some shocking - shocking we tell you - information! They say they have detected increased levels of vanilla and cinnamon in water samples from Puget Sound. And the sharp increase spiked right around Thanksgiving!

SEATTLE - Researchers at the University of Washington say all that holiday baking and eating has an environmental impact — Puget Sound is being flavored by cinnamon and vanilla. "Even something as fun as baking for the holiday season has an environmental effect," said Rick Keil, an associate professor of chemical oceanography. "When we bake and change the way we eat, it has an impact on what the environment sees. To me it shows the connectedness."

Keil and UW researcher Jacquelyn Neibauer's weekly tests of treated sewage sent into the sound from the West Point treatment plant in Magnolia showed cinnamon, vanilla and artificial vanilla levels rose between Nov. 14 and Dec. 9, with the biggest spike right after Thanksgiving.

Natural vanilla showed the largest increase, "perhaps indicative of more home baking using natural vanilla," Keil and Neibauer wrote.

"This conjecture is weakly supported by a verbal communication between Rick Keil and an employee of the Wallingford QFC (supermarket) who felt that natural vanilla peaked during the holiday seasons," the scientists' preliminary report says. "This will be investigated more thoroughly."

Do you really understand the implications of this? This is deadly serious. It can only mean one thing. The Animal Uprising™ has yet another dreadful secret!

Salmon bake cookies.

Money, Yes. Brains, Not So Much

A California family gives us an object lesson as to why the old tradition of putting candles on Christmas trees was discontinued when electric tree lights were invented. They decided to follow the old tradition.

And gutted their house, causing $2.3 million in damage.

Firefighters said a blaze that ripped through the family's luxury residence in Newport Beach, south of Los Angeles, was caused after candles placed on a Christmas tree ignited branches.

No one was injured in the fire, but the family's newly remodelled 3,600-square-foot (330-square-meter) home was effectively gutted by the flames, Newport Beach fire chief Paul Matheis said.

The family were following a Scandinavian tradition by placing lighted candles on the tree*, Matheis said.

(*In many places, this is known as "kindling".) May we suggest a few sets of these? NFPA report on Christmas tree fires here. A handy fact sheet here.

Slow Posting Today

It has been kind of a slow news day all around and I had a few things to take care of.

Dead Dictator Walking

Iraq's highest court has confirmed the death sentence of Saddam Hussein and has mandated that he be hanged within 30 days.

The sentence "must be implemented within 30 days," chief judge Aref Shahin. "From tomorrow, any day could be the day of implementation."

Tsunami Heading For Philippines

Breaking report just up on Yahoo: A powerful earthquake off the Southwestern coast of Taiwan has sent a tsunami heading toward the Philippines.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - A powerful quake struck off southwestern Taiwan on Tuesday, triggering a potentially destructive tsunami that was headed toward the Philippines on the second anniversary of the deadly waves that killed thousands in south Asia.

The quake, with a magnitude of between 6.7 and 7.2, was felt throughout Taiwan, Japan's Meteorological Bureau said. It swayed buildings and knocked objects off the shelves in the capital, Taipei.

The bureau said the 3-foot-high tsunami was expected to hit Basco in the Philippines.

Let's hope they get people out in time. It does not sound as bad as the one two years ago, but it is still dangerous.

UPDATE: False alarm, thankfully.

Going Broke?

Here's an interesting report from the Washington Post. Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University, completed an analysis of Iran's oil production. The conclusion is that Iran is facing a steep decline in oil exports. It is so serious that oil exports could cease entirely by 2015.

Iran is suffering a staggering decline in revenue from its oil exports, and if the trend continues income could virtually disappear by 2015, according to an analysis published yesterday in a journal of the National Academy of Sciences.

Iran's economic woes could make the country unstable and vulnerable, with its oil industry crippled, Roger Stern, an economic geographer at Johns Hopkins University, said in the report and in an interview.

Iran earns about $50 billion a year in oil exports. The decline is estimated at 10 to 12 percent annually. In less than five years, exports could be halved, and they could disappear by 2015, Stern predicted.

Now what is not apparent here is why this is the case. There is a hint that Iran is not reinvesting in its oil production facilities. This could be a situation where the continued diversion of money to the nuclear weapons program is starving other sectors of the economy. Stern thinks the falling exports and revenues could make Iran more tractable in the future. I'd point out that it may make a newly-minted nuclear weapon state more dangerous. (Note: I can't find a link to the report itself, will continue to look for one and will add it if I find it.)

UPDATE: PDF here. Thanks to John Campbell for emailing that link.

Brave Sir Jihadi

Brave Sir Robin ran away.
Bravely ran away, away!
When danger reared its ugly head,
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes, brave Sir Robin turned about
And gallantly he chickened out.
Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat,
Bravest of the brave, Sir Robin!
(Monty Python and the Holy Grail)

Brave Sir Robin lives on, but as an islamist  jihadi, apparently. Islamist militias in Somalia are running like mad to get away from attacking Ethiopian forces.

MOGADISHU, Somalia — Islamic fighters attempting to wrest power from Somalia's internationally recognized government retreated from the main front line early Tuesday, witnesses said, a day after Ethiopian fighter jets bombed the country's two main international airports.

Troops loyal to the Council of Islamic Courts withdrew more than 30 miles to the southeast from Daynuney, a town just south of Baidoa, the government headquarters.

The Islamic forces also abandoned their main stronghold in Bur Haqaba and were forming convoys headed toward the capital, Mogadishu, residents in villages along the road told The Associated Press by telephone.

"We woke up from our sleep this morning and the town was empty of troops, not a single Islamic fighter," Ibrahim Mohamed Aden, a resident of Bur Haqaba said.

One of the islamist spokesmen call this a "strategic withdrawal". Interested bystanders generally call something like this a "rout". Running without even attempting a rear guard action is generally seen that way. The militias are being led by al Qaeda operatives, this is supposed to be the Islamists third front in its war on the West. So far it isn't going so well. Good.

Update: Others:  The Moderate Voice, Captain's Quarters, Gateway Pundit, A Blog For All, Outside The Beltway, Jules Crittenden (who thinks I'm "Cruelly mocking" the jihadis. Oh, I am. Never mind.),  Riehl World View, Wake up America, In the Bullpen, Hot Air,

Global Frauding

For the first time, an inhabited island has disappeared beneath rising seas. Environment Editor Geoffrey Lean reports

Published: 24 December 2006

Rising seas, caused by global warming, have for the first time washed an inhabited island off the face of the Earth. The obliteration of Lohachara island, in India's part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal, marks the moment when one of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmentalists and climate scientists has started coming true.

As the seas continue to swell, they will swallow whole island nations, from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities.

Eight years ago, as exclusively reported in The Independent on Sunday, the first uninhabited islands - in the Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati - vanished beneath the waves. The people of low-lying islands in Vanuatu, also in the Pacific, have been evacuated as a precaution, but the land still juts above the sea. The disappearance of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 people, is unprecedented.

Terrifying. Screaming headlines. We're all going to die! Retroactively, apparently. Because Lohachara island actually disappeared 22 years ago. The Sundarban Islands are what are known as "alluvial islands". In layman's terms, they are made of "mud".

If the island was actually the home of 10,000 people at one time, their activities, particularly in disturbing mangrove trees that probably had a great deal to do with holding said mud in place, likely had a great deal to do with said mud dissolving. Of course, we won't find out whether that was the actual case with the kind of reporting that we are seeing from the Independent. Environmental scaremongering is getting completely out of hand at this point. This is outright fraud and the Independent's environmental editor should be fired.

H/T to Tim Blair for the link to the retroactive destruction of the island. Also posting: Dean's World, Bill's Bites,