Busy Day

Sorry about the light posting today. I've been trying to undo the damage my kids did to one of the computers around the Crabitat. It has been a day of colorful language and disappearing children around here. All those "fun" little programs they like aren't at all fun to deal with.

Deadly Deer Dog Darien

The Darien (Connecticut) News-Review reports a huge spike in the number of car-deer accidents in the past year or so. Which, of course, exactly coincides with the full scale launch of the Animal Uprising™. Readers here are not going to be surprised by this news in the least.

Drivers in the Northeast are no strangers to the experience of having to either slam on the brakes of their pickups or swerve their cars at breakneck speeds, just to avoid ramming into a deer leisurely crossing the road.

Only now, the situation is reaching menacing proportions, causing over $1.1 billion in insurance claims each year, as per estimates of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In the past year, there has been a dramatic surge in deer-vehicle accidents in several pockets of lower Fairfield County, according to a recent report.

Twenty to 25 percent of all such accidents in the state occur in this county.

Data compiled by the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance—made up of officials from 15 towns—indicate that in some municipalities, such collisions more than doubled in 2006 as compared with 2005 figures.

There were twice as many incidents in Darien in 2006, up from 16 in 2005 to 38 the previous year.

There were 86 cases in Greenwich in 2006 as against 38 in 2005. New Canaan reported 101 last year, up by 57 from 44 in 2005. Trumbull's count increased from 21 in 2005 to 38 in 2006.

However, these numbers do not present the complete picture. Every one in six deer strike goes unreported.

The deer's suicide attacks are meant to make drivers swerve and crash. We don't want to sound alarmist, far be it from us here at Blue Crab Boulevard to resort to hysterical outbursts. But the deer population is capable of doubling every two years. They are coming for your new Beemer, Boomers.  There is an easy solution, of course. It comes in a number of handy calibers. We're fond of .243 Winchester. It's that or start driving an Abrams tank to work. Come to think of it, that might be even more fun.

Feckless

Robert Caldwell pens a blistering op-ed in the San Diego Union-Tribune. The subject is the defeatist Democrats and their plans.

The Democrats' passage of a nonbinding resolution opposing the troop reinforcements that Bush and his Iraq commander, Army Gen. David Petraeus, say are essential to American success is damaging enough. If Democrats now use their power over appropriations to defeat the troop surge before it can be fully implemented, the political risk to Democrats will be greatly compounded.

Starkly put, Democrats risk making “Bush's war” their war, and then losing it.

If you think Democrats wouldn't be that foolish or reckless, think again.

Rep. John Murtha, the blustery Pennsylvania pol and anti-war ally of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is already pledging to use his power as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee's appropriations subcommittee on defense to stop the surge by restricting the deployment and funding of U.S. forces.

Here's what Murtha said in an interview Thursday with the MoveCongress.org Web site, which represents a coalition of anti-war groups:

“They (the troops) won't be able to continue. They won't be able to do the deployment. They won't have the equipment, they don't have the training and they won't be able to do the work. There's no question in my mind … we're going to stop this surge.”

Does Pelosi, smarter and smoother than Murtha, agree?

“I fully support that,” Pelosi said of Murtha's remarks.

What's building, then, is not only a political crisis for the Democratic Party but a constitutional clash over the president's, any president's, express powers as commander in chief of America's armed forces.

And there will be a constitutional crisis as a result of this effort by Unindicted Co-Conspirator Murtha. But even more important for the Democrats is that this will even further erode their reputation on defense and national security. It will also set a monstrous precedent that will someday come back to destroy a Democratic president. This is madness.

The Work Assigned Me

The state of Maryland has obtained the original, handwritten speech that George Washington delivered when he resigned his commission in 1783 and will put the document on public display. The speech has been in the hands of one family since it was delivered in Annapolis all those years ago.

It was a speech so moving the crowd wept. It was a speech so personally important George Washington's hand shook as he read it until he had to hold the paper still with both hands. After the ceremony, he handed the thing to a friend and sped out the door of the State House in Annapolis, riding off by horse.

For centuries, his words have resonated in American democracy even as the speech itself — the small piece of paper that shook in his hands that day — was quietly put away, out of the public eye and largely forgotten.

Today, however, amid festivities celebrating his birthday, Maryland officials plan to unveil the original document — worth $1.5 million — after acquiring it in a private sale from a family in Maryland who had kept it all these years. It took two years to negotiate the deal and raise money for the speech, which experts consider the most significant Washington document to change hands in the past 50 years.

The speech, scholars say, was a turning point in U.S. history. As the Revolutionary War was winding down, some wanted to make Washington king. Some whispered conspiracy, trying to seduce him with the trappings of power. But Washington renounced them all.

When I was growing up, we used to celebrate both Lincoln's birthday and Washington's birthday. We learned quite a lot about both presidents and I remember reading this speech back in grade school. Today, that is not the case. Very little is really taught about either man - my kids are shockingly ignorant of many of the details of the two presidents.

Here's a PDF of the actual document itself.

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, — and bidding an affectionate {a final} farewell to this August body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer {today deliver?} my Commission, and take my {ultimate} leave of all the employments of public life.

Iraqis Growing Angry At Foreign Arabs

This is interesting. The AP is reporting that anger and resentment at foreign Arabs is growing inside Iraq. It seems the Iraqis are tired of foreign fighters killing fellow Iraqis.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The wealthy Arab man, sporting a foreign accent, has just given an Iraqi teenager some cash and a bomb when police burst in and arrest him. "You come here from abroad and want to make this young man kill his Iraqi brothers?" an officer asks.

The television ad, widely aired across Iraq in recent weeks and meant to encourage Iraqis to report suspicious behavior to police, is a startling example of a new strain of anger and discrimination against foreign Arabs in this Arab-majority country.

Suspicion toward foreign Arabs stems, in part, from the fact that the Sunni-led insurgency has included many foreign fighters, most of them Arabs, who are blamed for deadly attacks that have claimed thousands of Iraqi lives.

Foreign Arabs who live in Iraq often try to hide their identities by faking an Iraqi accent or staying silent. Iraqis are usually suspicious when they hear a person speaking Arabic with a non-Iraqi accent.

An Associated Press reporter riding a public bus last month heard one of the passengers telling the driver in conversational Egyptian Arabic to drop him at a stop. After the man, carrying a bag, left the bus, Iraqis began arguing with the driver about why he had let the man on. Several passengers searched the seat where the man had been sitting to make sure he had not left a bomb.

This would be a good thing, I suspect. If the Iraqis begin turning on - and turning in - the foreign fighters, a lot of the worst violence will diminish. It also seems to be the first stirrings of a real national identity.

Train Bombings In India

Two crude bombs exploded on an Indian passenger train traveling to Pakistan. At least 66 people are known dead and authorities are warning that the toll may rise. Several other unexploded devices were found in other cars on the train as well.

The explosions and fire struck just before midnight Sunday, a day before peace talks between India and Pakistan.

The fire swept through two cars just before the Samjhauta Express reached the station in the village of Dewana, about 50 miles north of New Delhi. As on most Indian trains, the windows of many cars are barred for security reasons.

Rajinder Prasad, a laborer who lives near the site of the attack, raced with his neighbors to the scene, scooping up water from a reservoir and throwing it on the flames, which rose high above the carriages.

"We couldn't save anyone," he said. "They were screaming inside, but no one could get out." Within minutes, he said, the screams were drowned out by the roaring flames.

Bharti Arora, superintendent of the Haryana state railway police, put the death toll at 66 but authorities warned it could rise.

"From the less damaged coach, some people were seen jumping out with their bodies on fire," Arora said.

At least 30 passengers were hospitalized in the nearby town of Panipat, though they were later moved to larger medical facilities, officials said. A dozen critically injured people were brought to New Delhi's Safdarjung Hospital, a hospital statement said.

Dozens of families converged on the Panipat hospital, which was turned into a makeshift morgue. Nasruddin, 58, who like many in the region goes by just one name, traveled up from New Delhi to look for his sister in-law, Skeena, who was on the train — but he could only identify her by her possessions.

More from the Times of India here.