Blogrolling For Bucks

I actually occasionally try to find new and different blogs to link when I do roundups on my posts, not just linking "the usual suspects" every single time. One of those new to me bloggers that I found through the Technorati links is Cadillac Tight. I rather enjoy his takes on things, too. Joe has a pretty good set of hip-waders as well. He manages to endure the fever swamps over in Kosland and other places in Leftblogistan where I frankly try not to go unless absolutely necessary. (My hazmat suit is only so good.) Joe waded in to the Koz Kidz hangout to find a lament on one of the people who helped "storm the gate" with Kos only to watch the mighty Kos pull the gate shut behind him and delist the blogger off his blogroll. 

It's a tale of woe and anguish and lost revenue from the ad network that Kos claims not to actually control while actually completely controlling it.

Cadillac Tight is now on the blogroll here at this not-anywhere-near-as-powerful-blog. Stop by over there, take a look around and tell Joe I sent you. See if you can help make his day by giving him some hits. (Sorry, Joe, I have no ad revenue to dole out).

Seizing Power

(T)Hugo Chavez has just completed the theft of the electric utility that has served Venezuela - investor owned until now - since 1885. The company he stole it from, US based AES was paid $739.3 million. They had bought controlling interest in the company in 2000 for 1.7 billion and have invested another $600 million in it since then.

If I owned AES stock I would be very, very unhappy right now. But that is likely all they could get from the Thug of Caracas.

The agreement to pass the company's 82-percent stake in the utility to the Venezuelan government was signed by Paul Hanrahan, president and chief executive of Arlington, Va.-based AES, during a ceremony at the presidential palace in Caracas.

The final contract will be signed Monday, and AES' shares will be transferred to state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA, or PDVSA, within 30 days, Energy Minister Rafael Ramirez said.

Venezuela valued EDC at $900 million and will pay AES $739.3 million for its share, Ramirez said.

"We are very satisfied with this agreement. This agreement from our point of view respects the interests of both parties. … It is an acceptable amount," said Ramirez, who is also president of PDVSA.

AES has invested at least $2.3 billion in EDC since taking control of the company. It paid $1.7 billion for its stake in 2000 and subsequently invested another $600 million in the company, Hanrahan said.

"It wasn't in our plans to part with EDC. It's with a heavy heart that we part with EDC," he said. "It is one of the best utilities in Latin America."

But he said AES respected the Venezuelan government's decision to take control of the electricity sector.

"It has been a fair process," he said. "It respected the rights of the investors."

Let's all snort together on that one, shall we? Hanrahan had a gun to his head and had to either take the offer or lose everything. But fear not. Venezuela has plenty of chicken feet to go around. How long until the blackouts roll? I have a background in that industry, remember. It is very capital-intensive and requires a lot of infrastructure investment.

Where will that money be coming from? People look at what Chavez just did and will decide - unless they are interpretive dance artistes - to send their money somewhere safer. It will not take long for that utility to degenerate.

I Do Believe It’s Time

Here's a historical oddity I found while wandering aimlessly around over at YouTube. The Band with the Staple Singers performing The Weight. I have no idea what year this is from. But do check out the bass player. He is enthusiastic.

Bring On The Interpretive Dance!

I imagine that the vicarious communists of the San Francisco bay area are already practicing their interpretive dances to celebrate the Hell worker's paradise that Venezuela is in the process of collapsing into descending into evolving into under the benighted demented psychotic brain dead enlightened guidance of (T)Hugo Chavez. After all, they'll have to have someone to worship after the Maximum Leader finally takes his (looooooong overdue) journey to the nether regions to become Satan's personal panatela. But it would be best if they practice over here in the US and dine really well before heading over to fawn over their new hero.

Unless, of course, they are fond of chicken feet fricassee.

Could these people be any more stupid? Chávez and his government toadies are blaming "hoarders and speculators" for the shortages. The real problem is Chávez's price controls. Beef is artificially priced at $1.82 per pound when $2.41 per pound is required just to get it to the supermarket shelves. That means that the supermarkets have to sell it at cost, which they refuse to do, and the middlemen have to eat a $0.59 per pound loss, which they also refuse to do. Hence, no beef. Since the cattle raisers can't sell their beef to anyone, I guess that means they are hoarding it.

Chávez instituted price controls on over 400 basic items in 2003 in an effort to control inflation and help the poor. He successfully reduced the inflation rate from 25% where it was in 2003 to 78% where it stands today. And now the poor can't afford to buy even chicken feets. Nice job, Hugo!

Ah, the glorious Bolivarian revolution will come trotting in on the feet of chickens! Dance on, Garth!

When Amazon Anacondas Attack

Some humans go the whole nine yards to stand up to the Animal Uprising™. Or at least 16 feet. When a 16-foot reptile raider launched an assault on Joaquim Pereira's grandson, the man wasn't about to allow the tyke to be the blue plate special. He took matters into his own hands - literally - and fought the sneaky snake with fists, rocks and knife and defeated the marauding python.

"When I saw the snake wrapped around my grandson's neck I thought it was going to kill him," Joaquim Pereira told the Agencia Estado news service. "It was agonizing, I pulled it from one side, but it would come back on the other."

Pereira's 8-year-old grandson, Mateus, was attacked by the anaconda near a creek on his grandfather's ranch in the city of Cosmorama, about 250 miles northwest of Sao Paulo.

While the boy was playing with friends, the snake attacked and wrapped itself around him, police officer Hudson Augusto said. Anacondas are not poisonous, but kill their prey by coiling around them and squeezing until victims suffocate.

"It brought me to the ground and bit me," the boy told Globo TV, which showed footage of the dead snake. "Then it started crawling up my neck and began suffocating me."

The battle last for half an hour and ended up with Pereira victorious, his grandson safe if injured and the raw material for a few pairs of really nice boots.

When To Know You’re Really Wrong

Is something weird happening in Seattle that I don't know about? Seattle is not exactly known as a conservative stronghold after all. And yet twice today the Seattle media has come to my attention with sensible columns from two different papers on the same person, Ehren Watada. When even someone who agrees with your original words says you went too far and need to be punished, you should know you're wrong.

What Watada did is military disobedience. And no matter how opposed you may be to this war, you've got to stop and think: Do we really want officers who run the most powerful fighting machine in the history of the world deciding what rules to follow as they go along? Even if this time you might agree with this particular officer?

Last summer, I wrote that I admired Watada's act of conscience even as it was inevitable the Army would punish him for it. I wrote then that the Army was wrong to bring charges for the words he said.

Speech isn't so free in the Army. But it also isn't banned. All Watada had said at the time is that the war was based on false pretenses and was, in retrospect, a mistake. I don't think stating the obvious should be a jailable offense.

But that was before Aug. 12, 2006, when Watada did something that by his own admission was "radical." His statements that day were so eye-opening it seems likely he'll get a second conviction, this one for "conduct unbecoming an officer."

He spoke to the Veterans for Peace convention in Seattle. He called on all soldiers to also refuse to fight: "If soldiers realized this war is contrary to what the Constitution extols — if they stood up and threw their weapons down — no president could ever again initiate a war of choice," he said.

"When we say 'against all enemies, foreign and domestic,' what if our elected leaders become the enemy?"

Now if I said this, you'd yawn. As you should — I'm a newspaper columnist. But he's an officer urging a mass insurrection by the military against the civilian government.

The author, Danny Westneat, points out pretty much the same thing I did back a few months when there were revolting generals popping up all over the media. Do we really, really want a military that disobeys civilian orders? Do we really want a soldier with the lowly rank of lieutenant deciding what orders he will and will not follow? How long until the opposite situation occurs and an officer tells soldiers to pick up arms against the government? Westneat is not a war supporter, but he has not surrendered his rationality in an all consuming, end justifies the means crusade.

Earlier column from the Seattle P-I here (and it is still a must read. Heck read it again if you've already read it once).

Squirrel Knocks Over Bank

And we mean knocks over, too. The Animal Uprising™ has come up with a new attack technique that involves creative use of their "swerve strategy" where they hurl a suicidal animal in front of a moving motor vehicle in hopes the driver will lose control and crash. Only now they are trying to kill two birds with one stone so to speak by making the car swerve into a financial institution.

 LONG BRANCH — A 19-year-old man told police he swerved his car to miss a squirrel while arguing with his girlfriend just before he drove through the lobby of a bank at 339 Broadway early this morning, said Detective Sgt. Fernando Sanders.

Olen Andrews, 19, of Long Branch, was charged with driving while intoxicated, reckless driving and failure to keep right, after he and his girlfriend were found by police standing on the side of the road on Broadway, Sanders said. Andrew's vehicle struck the BCP Bank in the Millennium building at 12:17 a.m.

Andrews told police he was driving east on Broadway and was having an argument with his 19-year-old girlfriend when he swerved to avoid hitting "what appeared to be a squirrel in the roadway,'' Sanders said.

Officers responding smelled alcohol on Andrews' breath, Sanders said.

Looking on the bright side, the bank now has a drive through. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have a simple question: Where did the squirrel go after the crash? We strongly suggest the authorities check the vault. Because squirrels are notorious thieves even in the animal world.

Anna Nicole Smith Dead

According to reports just coming across the wire services, Anna Nicole Smith has been pronounced dead after she was found unresponsive in her hotel room. One of her lawyers reported it and ABC news is standing by at the hospital to do a live report. She was 39 years old.

Setting Records

American astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria has set a new record for time walking in space. He exceeded the old record of 58 hours and 32 minutes while only halfway through his latest excursion. The all-time record is held by Russian Anatoly Solovyov with over 82 hours. Here's picture of the other astronaut  who also has been outside the station today, Sunita L. Williams. I envy them. More great NASA photos are here.

ISS014-E-13301 (4 Feb. 2007) — Astronaut Sunita L. Williams, Expedition 14 flight engineer, participates in the second of three sessions of extravehicular activity (EVA) in nine days, as construction continues on the International Space Station. During the spacewalk, Williams and Michael E. Lopez-Alegria (out of frame), commander and NASA space station science officer, reconfigured the second of two cooling loops for the Destiny laboratory module, secured the aft radiator of the P6 truss after retraction and prepared the obsolete Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) for removal this summer.

Lebanon Update

The Lebanese government seized a truck carrying munitions to Hezbollah fighters in the South of the country. The truck had come from the Bekaa valley and was grabbed as it tried to head out of Beirut.

And Hezbollah is pitching a fit and demanding its return.

Information Minister Ghazi Aridi said earlier on Thursday customs authorities had stopped a truck carrying weapons on the outskirts of Beirut and had taken it to the city's port for investigation.

Hezbollah said the authorities had confiscated a "truck carrying munitions to the resistance." The truck had been carrying the load from the Bekaa Valley in the east to the south, it said in a statement.

"The government program clearly confirms the right of the resistance … to work to liberate the rest of the occupied land, the prisoners and to confront the Zionist threats," the statement said, demanding the return of the truck and munitions.

Israel and Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, fought a war in July and August following the Lebanese group's capture of two Israeli soldiers on July 12.

The war was halted by a U.N. Security Council resolution which authorized the deployment of thousands of U.N. troops to monitor the truce. The Lebanese army also deployed to the south under the resolution.

The Lebanese government is supposed to halt the flow of weapons to Hezbollah from abroad under the resolution. A U.N. envoy and anti-Syrian Lebanese leaders have accused Syria of smuggling weapons to its allies in Lebanon in recent months.

Good for the government for actually doing the right thing here. Pop quiz: Where did the arms come from? Here's a hint: they did not arrive from Oz on the wings of a whirlwind:

Any real questions about how helpful the Assad regime wants to be about securing peace in the area?

Bloggers NOT Fired

The John Edwards blog just posted this a short while ago:

From John Edwards: The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte's and Melissa McEwan's posts personally offended me. It's not how I talk to people, and it's not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it's intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word. We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.

There is also a statement from each of the bloggers:

Amanda Marcotte: My writings on my personal blog Pandagon on the issue of religion are generally satirical in nature and always intended strictly as a criticism of public policies and politics.  My intention is never to offend anyone for his or her personal beliefs, and I am sorry if anyone was personally offended by writings meant only as criticisms of public politics.  Freedom of religion and freedom of expression are central rights, and the sum of my personal writings is a testament to this fact.

Melissa McEwan: Shakespeare's Sister is my personal blog, and I certainly don't expect Senator Edwards to agree with everything I've posted.  We do, however, share many views - including an unwavering support of religious freedom and a deep respect for diverse beliefs. It has never been my intention to disparage people's individual faith, and I'm sorry if my words were taken in that way.

Ok, we have the non-apologetic apology (Gee, sorry you took offense at my offensiveness) that is almost mandatory these days. My guess, and it only a guess right now, is that there will be a little interval here and then both bloggers will quietly "Leave for other opportunities", the usual politically graceful way out of a nasty bind. I rather suspect Edwards saw a buzz saw coming at him from the left and knew he had to cover himself fast.

As a number of people have pointed out in the past day, why in the world would people who don't want Edwards to win object to him keeping them both employed? It's like a personal whack-a-mole machine with them on board!

We Keep Telling People

We warned people about the new terror tactic of the Animal Uprising™, that of crazed Cervidae crashing through windows and wreaking havoc inside people's homes. We also provided thoughtful and completely rational advice on how to stop the home invasion onslaught: spring snare traps! They hardly ever catch a family member! And if this family had been paying attention, they could have averted their recent terrorization by a deadly deer of doom.

Most families living in Fleming Island know one of the benefits is being close to nature, seeing deer walking around outside and drinking from ponds. However, on Monday the Corey family got closer to nature than they ever expected.

At 8 a.m., Mitch Corey said he was experiencing the typical chaos that comes along with trying to get two kids ready for school, when he heard a loud crash.

"I'm in the kitchen and I hear this incredible noise that sounded like cabinets were falling off the walls and glass was falling everywhere," Corey said.

He said the kids were screaming and he noticed a giant hole in his dinning room window, so he ran outside, thinking someone had thrown something through his window.

Little did Corey know, the window crasher was inside of his home.

"My wife yelled at me and said, 'Get in here. There's a deer in our bedroom,'" Corey said.

Sigh. Well, we'll keep trying to warn those folks who are just not listening to our sage advice.

Killer Mascot!

Authorities in China have seized a large number of counterfeit Olympic mascot souvenirs. Bad enough, right? Well, it also turns out that the counterfeits are not only crude knockoffs of the real mascots, some are also made with toxic materials.

Inspectors raided three flats crammed with toys and mascots for next year's Games, the Beijing News said.

"The products were roughly crafted and some were even made using poisonous materials," the paper said, citing a district civil hygiene office. It did not say what poisonous materials were used in the fakes.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are always trying to help. So we are providing a handy pointer to what the real mascots look like. We strongly caution readers to stay right away from the ones that look like this:

Debunking The Denials

Jim Lindgren, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, has done a masterful dismantling of the denial by the left and by an often quoted academic, Jerry Lembcke, that Vietnam-era veterans or servicemen were spat upon by anti-war protesters. Lindgren has found numerous contemporary news accounts of incidents without having to dig all that hard.

I have been looking into these and other claims by Lembcke and they appear to hold about as much water as do his notions about a primal (wet) unconscious.

It is surprising that, without his having done an exhaustive review of published sources in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Lembcke would manufacture such a speculative argument, essentially treating hundreds of eyewitnesses as victims of “false memory” (at best).

+++++++

EVIDENCE:

Contrary to Lembcke’s claims, I quite easily found many accounts published in the 1967-1972 period claiming spitting on servicemen.

For example, on October 6, 1967, John F. Geyer and Bill Bowers, two sailors in uniform on a ten-day leave before shipping out, were accosted and taunted by a group of about ten young men while leaving a high-school football game in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Bowers heard one of them say, “We’re going to get a couple of sailors.” Then one of the band of attackers spat at Geyer, hitting both Geyer and Bowers. Geyer, who was a former high-school football lineman, swung at his attacker. The attacker then stabbed Geyer in the side with a knife. After two hospital stays, Geyer fully recovered. In January and February, 1968, Geyer’s 18-year-old attacker was prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced to a reformatory. All this is laid out in a series of stories in the local newspaper, the Bucks County Courier Times.

This was one of many stories published in American newspapers in the late 1960s and early 1970s in which American servicemen were spat on by citizens or anti-war protesters or the opposite: pro-war servicemen or citizens were spat on by anti-war protesters. (Because Lembcke recognizes the existence of the stories of people spitting on protesters, I'll leave that substantial body of evidence out of this post.)

Believe me, there is a lot more over there. Take a blood pressure pill before reading it all though. It is pretty hard to take in a massive dose like that. Lembcke apparently based his "work" on electronic records. That will be a problem in the future for researchers who don't get off their computers to find original source material. Anyone want to be that Lembcke will not apologize or retract his work? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

UPDATE: Others: Polimom, "poot!". Jawa Report (Good Lt.): Score: one to nothing. Brainster: Great job, Lindgren.

Comparing The Records

Robert L. Jamieson, Jr., writing in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has one of the most powerful columns I have read recently. It compares two soldiers. One you have heard endlessly about, another you probably have not. I am not even going to try to excerpt this one. It really needs to be read completely. Then you really need to ask yourself the question that Jamieson asks in the title of his column. Please read the whole thing.

I know what my answer is. It isn't the well known name.