Ectoplasmic Source Conjured

The Associated Press, after six weeks or so, finally says it has confirmed - through Iraqi government sources - that the mysterious Jamil Hussein actually exists and is about to be arrested. Very good. Now we can stop focusing on the sideshow of whether or not he actually exists and get on with the real questioning. We would like to know why the 61 stories sourced to Hussein have not been reported by any other news source. We would like to know why the AP dropped all reference to the four burned mosques. And we really, really want to know why the most lurid single source stories coming out of Iraq have all come from one Jamil Hussein.

Khalaf offered no explanation Thursday for why the ministry had initially denied Hussein's existence, other than to state that its first search of records failed to turn up his full name. He also declined to say how long the ministry had known of its error and why it had made no attempt in the past six weeks to correct the public record.

Hussein was not the original source of the disputed report of the attack; the account was first told on Al-Arabiya satellite television by a Sunni elder, Imad al-Hashimi, who retracted it after members of the Defense Ministry paid him a visit. Several neighborhood residents subsequently gave the AP independent accounts of the Shiite militia attack on a mosque in which six people were set on fire and killed.

Khalaf told the AP that an arrest warrant had been issued for the captain for having contacts with the media in violation of the ministry's regulations.

Hussein told the AP on Wednesday that he learned the arrest warrant would be issued when he returned to work on Thursday after the Eid al-Adha holiday. His phone was turned off Thursday and he could not be reached for further comment.

Hussein appears to have fallen afoul of a new Iraqi push, encouraged by some U.S. advisers, to more closely monitor the flow of information about the country's violence, and strictly enforce regulations that bar all but authorized spokesmen from talking to media.

During Saddam Hussein's rule, information in Iraq had been fiercely controlled by the Information Ministry, but after the arrival of U.S. troops in 2003 and during the transition to an elected government in 2004, many police such as Hussein felt freer to talk to journalists and give information as it occurred.

As a consequence, most news organizations working in Iraq have maintained Iraqi police contacts routinely in recent years. Some officers who speak with reporters withhold their names or attempt to disguise their names using different variants of one or two middle names or last names for reasons of security. Hussein, however, spoke for the record, using his authentic first and last name, on numerous occasions.

His first contacts with the AP were in 2004, when the current Interior Ministry and its press apparatus was still being formed out of the chaotic remains of the Saddam-era ministry.

The information he provided about various police incidents was never called into question until he became embroiled in the attempt to discredit the AP story about the Hurriyah mosque attack.

Bob Owens says now the game is getting interesting now. Incidentally, notice how the AP says there was an attempt to discredit them? There is - and always has been - a possibility that this entire thing was a setup to discredit bloggers. But the original questions were raised because of the lurid nature of the reports and the fact that the four mosques reported to have been burned out in the original story appear not to have been damaged. If there is discredit here it is not on the bloggers who just wanted the facts. It is on the AP for stonewalling this for so long. The reporting of extremely lurid news via a single source with no backup validation is highly questionable and the AP damn well knows that. So now let's see where this leads.

Nothing Up My Sleeve

Viola! Georgia suddenly reappears! We reported in December that A large number of communities in Georgis had suddenly disappeared. After less than a month, the Georgia Transportation Department has suddenly found those 500 communities! Sherlock Holmes would be so proud of their investigative skills.

ATLANTA - Po Biddy Crossroads will be back on the map. So will Hopeulikit and Doctortown, and hundreds of others that were erased.

From Abbottsford to Zetella, the 488 communities wiped from this year's version of the state highway map will be restored, the Georgia Department of Transportation said Wednesday.

The towns were erased from the map after the transportation department decided it wanted a clearer, more legible version of the map to hand out for free at visitors centers and tourism hotspots. But small-town officials were infuriated, and said it was an insult to rural residents.

Vicki Gavalas, the department's spokeswoman, said she regrets that any rural residents felt slighted. "That certainly was not our intent," she said. "Indeed, our only intent was to make the official state map a more easily read resource."

Free translation: "We didn't think they'd be able to get this much press attention. We'll erase them in smaller numbers next time, starting with the ones that screamed the loudest this time." Not that we're cynical around here or anything. We suspect this is the solution to the problem that the transportation people will eventually arrive at.

Wild Night In Wisconsin

This is the first formal photo caption contest Blue Crab Boulevard has run. We had to wait for just the right tasteful and thought provoking photograph, after all. It had to meet our exceedingly high standards. This one actually exceeds those standards. Ladies and gentlemen, we give you a man in formal attire seated on a dead horse. Have a ball. Winner gets absolutely nothing whatsoever. Not even bragging rights. (Because if you brag about a caption for this picture, you are a sad panda.)

Calf With Two Faces Born!

Sometimes even we can't make this stuff up. A dairy farm in Virginia has a new resident. A calf was just born that actually has two faces. (Picture at link while it remains active).

The animal is normal from its tail until its unusually large head. The calf breathes out of two noses and has two tongues, which move independently, according to Heldreth. There appears to be a single socket containing two eyes where the heads split.

"It's the craziest thing I've ever seen," the dairyman said.

During the calf's birth, Heldreth said he first thought there were two calves.

The calf has two lower jaws, but only one mouth. Heldreth feeds her through a tube, and acknowledges he probably can't maintain that feeding schedule for long.

The calf was the product of artificial insemination, which was supposed to create a genetically superior specimen. "Genetically, this is one of my better calves," he said.

That last statement scares heck out of us. But the farmer won't have to feed the calf for very long. The calf has a bright future in politics. He's a natural.

Sometimes We Scare Ourselves

Some people think we're actually joking around when we provide our vital coverage of the growing Animal Uprising™. We assure our faithful readers and the mental health authorities that we are completely serious. And sane. Really. We can prove it to, except in cases where doing so would violate one of the restraining orders. The other day we warned about themed attacks by the Animal Uprising™. In that case, some wild boars attempted to celebrate the dawn of the Year of the Boar with a human roast. We also pointed out that next year was going to be the Year of the Rat.

Told ya so. They're gearing up for the party already.

It is said that you are never more than six feet from a rat but that distance could shrink further as a new report reveals that Britain's rat population is rising at an alarming rate.

The 2006 national rodent survey, published by the National Pest Technician Association (NPTA), says that there has been a "serious increase" in the number of rats in the UK.

The number of brown rat (rattus norvegicus) infestations jumped by 13% last year, showing an overall increase of 39% in rat numbers since 1998.

Even more worryingly, there was a 22% rise in the number of rat findings over the summer, a time when they are supposed to be less active than usual. In total there has been a 69% increase in rats during the summer months since records began eight years ago.

The survey of 70% of Britain's local authorities also shows that call-outs for house mice (mus domesticus) are also on the increase.

Oddly enough, the only area in Britain that did not report an increase was the Isle of Man. We could point out to the folks down in Apopka, Florida that they should count their blessings while they're counting up the mouse carcasses in the morning. But I really doubt they'd take a lot of comfort in that. And we really don't need yet another restraining order.

As The Goalposts Recede Majestically In The Distance…

The Influence Peddler examines the rapidly moving goalposts of Nancy Pelosi's much vaunted "first 100 hours". And they are approaching escape velocity at this point. 100 hours becomes 100 "legislative" hours, then morphs into yet another definition of 100 hours that could last weeks.

The incoming Democratic leadership promised a fast start to the new Congress, with an ambitious '100 Hour' agenda. They then restated that they didn't actually mean the first, you know - 100 hours, or anything. They meant the first 100 legislative hours - a period that could stretch over a number of weeks, actually.

Now, they further clarify that they don't really mean the first 100 legislative hours - they mean the first 100 legislative hours not counting the new House rules package:

Time spent debating changes to the rules package will not count against Pelosi’s 100-hour legislative blitzkrieg, set to begin the week of Jan. 8 and last approximately 10 legislative days, ending when President Bush delivers his State of the Union address on Jan. 23.

This is some of the best doubletalk in recent memory. And they apparently really believe that the voters won't notice. I promise you, they will. They voted for a change and are getting more of the same only worse. This is going to be an immensely entertaining two years! (Influence Peddler has video, too! Crank it up and sing along. You know the words!)

The Good, The Bad And The Bacon

Yet another pigs gone wild story coming out of Britain today reports on more porcine pounding of people and pets. On the bright side it also has a heroine! A gritty, gutsy granny with an attitude!

A grandmother described yesterday how she fended off three wild boar with a dog lead to prevent them attacking her dachshund.

Rosemarie Hamilton-Meikle, 80, was walking her four-year-old, 14-inch tall pet, Bosun, in woodland on the edge of Dartmoor when the dog darted into the undergrowth.

She followed him and found him lying on the ground surrounded by the boars. She swung the lead at them and the two females fled. But the male boar stood his ground three feet away.

Mrs Hamilton-Meikle had another swing and struck the male boar on the nose, sending him fleeing into the undergrowth at Buckland Monachorum, Devon.

In the past year animal rights activists have illegally released wild boar from two farms in the county. The animals are now thought to be breeding and roaming the area.

That had to be a sight to see. An 80-year old woman flogging the heck out of rampaging bacon. But the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals obviously is in denial:

The incident happened on Monday, the day that another wild boar confronted a man walking his two dogs in the same area.

Jo Barr of the RSPCA said: "Wild boar tend to avoid people. There are only two reported cases of attacks."

Uh, sure, Jo. Right you are. We never hear of any bacon going bad in Britain. We especially never see video of anything like that. And it certainly never happens anywhere else in the world. Nope. Absolutely correct as always.

When Cans Talk

Generally speaking, up until now if canned goods began to talk to you, it would be considered a very good sign that it was time to stop drinking. However, some evil - and I really mean evil - scientists are working on a technology to have cans talk, flash ads and generally stop behaving as normal canned food. Instead your can of peas will behave like a Madison Avenue pitchman on steroids.

If piped music and bleeping scanners get on your nerves at the supermarket, things could be about to get a whole lot worse.

Tins of food could soon be calling out to you from the shelves.

Scientists working on silicon chip technology have developed a tiny plastic screen which could be wrapped around tins, flashing up special offers as shoppers walk past.

If combined with a speaker and mini processor, tins could even call out recipe suggestions.

Baked beans could recommend serving them up with sausages while tinned peaches might suggest a dollop of cream.

The same chip technology could also one day become so miniaturised that it could fit within a shirt button.

This could then communicate directly with washing machines to ensure the perfect temperature for washing.

Of course, they could also keep an eye on the person wearing the clothing. And plot the best way to eliminate you. Not that we're paranoid or anything. Somebody find these scientists and stop them!

Last Stand In Somalia

Somalian government troops and Ethiopian forces report having about 600 islamist fighters completely surrounded. They are cutting off any escape routes and are promising to kill or capture all of the fighters. US Navy forces are assisting as well by cutting off escape by sea.

In the past 10 days, Ethiopian-backed government forces have driven out the Islamic movement that had controlled Mogadishu and much of southern Somalia for more than six months. The Islamic movement retreated to the southern tip of Somalia and vowed to keep fighting, raising the specter of an Iraq-style guerrilla war.

The Somali forces have surrounded the Islamic militiamen "from every direction" in the southwestern district of Badade, near the Kenyan border, government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari told The Associated Press. "The fighting is going on," Dinari said. "We hope they will either surrender or be killed by our troops."

Kenya sent extra troops to the Somali frontier and closed its border, fearing an exodus of refugees and foreign fighters.

Dinari said some Islamic militants have been trying to escape by sea. "But U.S. anti-terrorist forces have been deployed there to prevent them from escaping," he added.

In Washington on Wednesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said U.S. Navy vessels were deployed off the Somali coast looking for al-Qaida and allied militants trying to escape.

Good for them. They really need to finish this thing and not let it drag out. They also need to completely head off the islamists reverting to terror tactics by letting them escape. Unless Ethiopia wants an "insurgency" (read murderous islamist terrorism) on its border which will spill over, they have to end this with a smashing victory.

Carpet Bombing Of Colorado Cows Commences

National Guard troops have commenced bombing the cattle who have launched an assault on Colorado. The Animal Uprising™ is finally getting the attention of the authorities! We here at Blue Crab Boulevard can only heave a sigh of relief that our dire warnings are finally getting through.

LAMAR, Colo. - National Guard troops headed for snowbound fields in trucks piled high with hay Thursday and prepared their helicopters to resume an emergency haylift that had already dropped more than 900 bales across Colorado's rangeland in an effort to save stranded and starving cattle.

Using smaller helicopters, ranchers landed near frozen streams and used sledgehammers to chop ice from the water for the livestock to drink.

The situation on the snowbound plains is getting dire. Typically, cattle can survive only five to 10 days without food or water in good conditions, state veterinarian John Maulsby said. For the cattle in eastern Colorado and on the Kansas and Nebraska plains, it has now been a week since a blizzard dumped up to 3 feet of snow and whipped up 10-foot-high drifts.

Of course, regular readers know that we are often able to get pictures of these events because of our enormous network of profoundly deranged informants. As is the case today, of course:

(/humor - Keep up the good work, guys. The Colorado National Guard troops deserve a thank you.)

Shifting Blame

Debra Saunders has an excellent column up over at Real Clear Politics that examines the reactions from some people to the execution of Saddam Hussein. The foolishness becomes apparent very quickly.

Within hours of Saddam Hussein's hanging, the drumbeat began — as cable-news sages pronounced that the Iraqi scourge's execution will not improve the situation in Iraq. Or, as Newsweek intoned, "Little is gained by Saddam's demise."

These days, the first rule of war coverage is that nothing — not even military victory — will improve Iraq's prospects.

The second rule is that everything is botched. So Hussein's trial was not fair, the appeals process was too swift and the execution was insufficiently solemn.

In the 24-hour news cycle, you can kill your own citizens with impunity, subject them to starvation and lead them into an avoidable war. But, if later you are brought to justice, coverage of your trial will be not so much about the carnage as about the "deeply-flawed" trial.

It won't much matter that the defendant admitted that he ordered the deaths of 148 Shiite men and boys in Dujail in 1982. To the American press, justice would have been better served if it had moved with the slothfulness of a California death-penalty appeal. You would think it a good thing for Iraq if Hussein had more time to foment insurgency and thumb his nose at the families of his victims.

Read the entire thing, it is scathing. But this column makes me wonder at the reactions to the death of this monster who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people, although he was executed for only a fraction of those. Compare that, if you will, to the reactions that followed the death by natural causes of Augusto Pinochet. There the wailing and gnashing of teeth was that the brutal former dictator escaped justice.

Pinochet is blamed - at worst - for some 3,000 deaths. Makes you wonder about priorities, doesn't it?

Hope For Somalia

Rosemary Righter, writing in The Times of London, has a very well researched and written article on the state of Somalia today after the islamists set a land speed record for brisk walks. As she puts it, there is a chance here for the Somalis to avoid anther trip into hell. It remains to be seen if they can grasp the opportunity, but the Ethiopians have done Somalia a great service by routing the islamists.

Somalis, who fought two wars with Ethiopia over the Ogaden desert, will not readily see their old enemy as a saviour. Yet by acting when the UN and the African Union could come up with nothing but paper plans, the Ethiopians have given this wretched failed state a chance. When the Tanzanians invaded Uganda in 1979 to get rid of the murderous Idi Amin, they were piously denounced by the international community. They deserved praise and so do the Ethiopians. Uganda’s troubles did not end then, but it was the start of the road out of Hell. Somalia is an even tougher case, but it has at least been rescued from another plunge into the inferno.

What next? The country has a federal Government only in name, without ministries or offices, let alone an effective military — a Government whose writ ran nowhere a mere fortnight ago, not even, securely, in the little town of Baidoa where it had been holed up since in 2004. Transitional in name and impotent in fact, it has had, until now, no relevance to Somalis. Not least because its ranks include warlords, its brave insistence that “the warlord era is over” will not readily be believed. It has only weeks to introduce some semblance of civil order. The process will be chaotic; the attempt may fail.

Yet this is still the first government since 1987, when tribal armies combined to overthrow the dictator Siad Barre, that, for now at least, does not face an organised military threat. That is important. So is the fact that President Abdullahi Yusuf hails from one of Somalia’s two biggest clans, the more northerly Darod, and Ali Mohamed Ghedi, its convincingly moderate and well-educated Prime Minister, from the other, the Mogadishu-based Hawiye clan. The warlords are at least nominally within the government camp.

There is a great deal of information about the intricacies of Somali politics, which are essentially tribal in nature. There are many challenges for the interim government, but they now have a hope for the future that simply did not exist two weeks ago. The West would do well to help prop this government up long enough for them to realize that hope. This is a chance to repair a failed state. We need to take that chance.

Animal Escalation

Not content with merely overrunning Florida, the Animal Uprising™ has decided to take over an entire continent. With the help of Human Quislings, they are attacking the very basis of the economy down under. That's right, they are attacking the credit card industry in Australia!

SYDNEY (AFP) - An Australian bank has blushingly admitted issuing a credit card to a cat. Messiah, a ginger tom, was given a credit limit of 4,200 (3,300 US) dollars.

Messiah's owner applied for an additional Visa card in his name on her account with the Bank of Queensland to test its identity security system — and was astonished when it was granted.

"I just couldn't believe it," Katherine Campbell told local media, cradling the cool cat and his card. "People need to be aware of this and banks need to have better security."

The envelope containing her cat's credit card was addressed to Messiah Campbell and she was not even notified that a secondary card had been issued on her account, she said.

Just imagine the effects millions of animals running up enormous credit card debt, then skipping on the bills will have. Australia's days are numbered, I'm afraid. What is even worse is that with access to credit, the animals also now have access to international travel. They can buy airline tickets. Just wait until the crocodiles figure that one out.

Minimum Wage, Maximum Hype

George Will examines the push for raising the minimum wage and makes a number of excellent points. Not that he believes that will change anything because for a number of reasons the fix is already in on this terrible idea.

Most of the working poor earn more than the minimum wage, and most of the 0.6 percent (479,000 in 2005) of America's wage workers earning the minimum wage are not poor. Only one in five workers earning the federal minimum lives in families with earnings below the poverty line. Sixty percent work part time, and their average household income is well over $40,000. (The average and median household incomes are $63,344 and $46,326, respectively.)

Forty percent of American workers are salaried. Of the 75.6 million paid by the hour, 1.9 million earn the federal minimum or less, and of these, more than half are under 25 and more than a quarter are between ages 16 and 19. Many are students or other part-time workers. Sixty percent of those earning the federal minimum or less work in restaurants and bars and earn tips — often untaxed, perhaps — in addition to wages. Two-thirds of those earning the federal minimum today will, a year from now, have been promoted and be earning 10 percent more. Raising the minimum wage predictably makes work more attractive relative to school for some teenagers and raises the dropout rate. Two scholars report that in states that allow people to leave school before 18, a 10 percent increase in the state minimum wage caused teenage school enrollment to drop 2 percent.

The federal minimum wage has not been raised since 1997, so 29 states with 70 percent of the nation's workforce have set minimum wages between $6.15 and $7.93 an hour. Because aging liberals, clinging to the moral clarities of their youth, also have Sixties Nostalgia, they are suspicious of states' rights. But regarding minimum wages, many have become Brandeisians, invoking Justice Louis Brandeis's thought about states being laboratories of democracy.

Will doesn't mention the real driver behind this for some reason. The unions have an enormous stake in this because of the tie between many union contracts and the minimum wage. But as Will points out, this one is pretty much a done deal. It will take years for the damage to become apparent. But putting in price controls has always been a horrible idea that has inevitably backfired. So it is with price controls on the labor market.

Turn Your Attention To The Center Ring

I'm up on a tightwire
One side's ice and one is fire
It's a circus game with you and me

I'm up on a tight rope
One side's hate and one is hope
But the top hat on my head is all you see
And the wire seems to be the only place for me
A comedy of errors and I'm falling
Like a rubber neck giraffe you look into my past
Well maybe you're just too blind to, see
(Leon Russel, Tightrope)

The Washington Post examines Nancy Pelosi's highwire act of promises of big reforms versus the day to day business as usual of Washington Politics. It is not a particularly flattering picture.

On June 15, beneath the crystal chandeliers and Corinthian pilasters of the Cannon Caucus Room, House Democrats had to decide how they really felt about the "culture of corruption." After months of expressing outrage over Republican scandals, what would they do about the $90,000 the FBI had found in the freezer of one of their own?

To House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the answer was obvious: Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) had to give up his coveted spot on the Ways and Means Committee. But at the closed-door caucus meeting, several black Democrats complained that Pelosi was not their emperor or queen, while Jefferson implored his colleagues to keep him on Ways and Means for the sake of Hurricane Katrina's victims. No one spoke up for Pelosi — except Pelosi.

She began by praising Jefferson's wife and five daughters: Jamila, Jalila, Jelani, Nailah and Akilah. But she quickly made it clear that Jefferson's legal problems had become her political problem: "I am not an emperor or a queen. But neither am I a fool."

Pelosi explained that Democrats should be the party of ethics, that appearances count, that dealing forcefully with Jefferson's scandal would help everyone else in the room. "You didn't elect me emperor or queen," she said. "You elected me leader."……

……But it is not yet clear whether Jefferson's ouster heralded a new era of honesty and accountability, or just a one-off political calculation inspired by the 2006 campaign. After the midterm elections, Pelosi ignored the ethical cloud around Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) to support his bid to be majority leader, and she nearly chose Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.) to chair the intelligence committee even though the House once impeached him when he was a federal judge. And, in December, when Jefferson faced a fight for his political life in a runoff against state Rep. Karen R. Carter, a black Democrat with none of his ethical baggage, Pelosi refused to get involved.

Today, Jefferson will take his seat in Pelosi's House. His inconvenient presence will be a constant reminder of the fine line the new speaker will have to walk between rhetoric and reality, between the cross-cutting demands of her caucus and the demands of the public.

You should read the story just to understand how the national party abandoned the candidate that could have easily knocked Jefferson out of his seat. They chose to ignore Karen Carter, instead. The WaPo puts the responsibility mostly at the feet of Pelosi, fastening the Jefferson albatross firmly to the new Speaker. I'm thinking that this sort of coverage is going to become more common in the next few months. Does it mean that the press is becoming less biased? Hardly. What it likely indicates is a power struggle within the Democratic party. The more centrist DLC Democrats versus the fringe elements who believe they have a right to shout down anyone who doesn't bow to them, including Democrats. As Karen Carter puts it later in the article:

"I kept saying: 'This is the culture of corruption, and you can help stop it,' " Carter said. "They chose to ignore me. If the leadership had made a clear statement that this kind of behavior was unacceptable, maybe they wouldn't have to deal with him anymore."

But now they do and Jefferson's continued presence in the House is bound tightly to Nancy Pelosi. Tightrope time.