We Larceny A Yellow Submarine

We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine
We all live in a yellow submarine
Yellow submarine, yellow submarine

And our friends are all aboard
Many more of them live next door
And the band begins to play

(Lennon/McCartney, Yellow Submarine)

Well, someone actually did just that. They stole the yellow submarine. And this could be considered the original yellow submarine since it predates the more famous song by a good many years.

FELTON, Calif. - A 3 1/2-ton yellow submarine has fallen off the radar. The 10-foot-long sub, built by a resident to patrol Monterey Bay during the 1940s and 1950s, was reported missing Feb. 15 from its Santa Cruz Mountains berth on Steinmaier Road by owner Carl Barker.

"It sounds bizarre," said Detective Kevin Coyne of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office. "All I know is … there's no suspects."

Irven Thomson built the vessel from an old propane tank about 60 years ago. He added a turret, hatch, windows and a cement keel, rudder and navigational instruments.

"I think they launched it a couple of times," Barker said.

One wonders if it looked like this puppy. Only yellow, of course. The missing submarine was built for "vigilante" patrols of Monterey Bay - whatever those might be….. Did he plan to torpedo miscreants?

Here There Be Monsters

The old phrase that titles this post was sometimes used on maps in the Middle Ages (either in words or in pictures of fanciful sea monsters) to describe the unknown - that which lay outside the bounds of the known world. It was a warning to mariners that many ships that went beyond the boundaries did not return. (Never mind that many ships that sailed well within the bounds also never returned.) But, "Here there be monsters," was the warning. Don't go there; there are unknown horrors and terrible death waiting beyond the known bounds of the world. Often, that was exactly the case, of course.

We know the bounds of the world these days and have mapped it completely. There are no more unknown territories, no more areas where there be monsters, right? Except, there are monsters. They are quite real and they are really killing innocents using horrific methods. It is called chlorine gas and the terrorists are using it to kill fellow Muslims in Iraq.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Insurgents exploded a truck carrying chlorine gas canisters Wednesday — the second such "dirty" chemical attack in two days — while a U.S. official said ground fire apparently forced the downing of a Black Hawk helicopter. All nine aboard the aircraft were rescued.

The attacks offer a sweeping narrative on evolving tactics by Sunni insurgents who have proved remarkably adaptable.

Military officials worry extremists may have recently gained more access to firepower such as shoulder-fired anti-aircraft rockets and heavy machine guns — and more expertise to use them. The Black Hawk would be at least the eighth U.S. helicopter to crash or be taken down by hostile fire in the past month.

The gas cloud in Baghdad, meanwhile, suggests possible new and coordinated strategies by bombers trying to unleash toxic — and potentially deadly — materials. "Terrorists are using dirty means," said Brig. Gen. Qassim Moussawi, an Iraqi military spokesman.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a U.S. military spokesman, said initial reports indicated the chopper was brought down by "small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades" north of Baghdad, but gave no further details. All nine aboard were taken away on a rescue helicopter, he said.

In Baghdad, a pickup truck carrying chlorine gas cylinders was blown apart, killing at least five people and sending more than 55 to hospitals gasping for breath and rubbing stinging eyes, police said.

On Tuesday, a bomb planted on a chlorine tanker left more than 150 villagers stricken north of the capital. More than 60 were still under medical care on Wednesday. Chlorine causes respiratory trouble and skin irritation in low levels and possible death with heavy exposure.

In Washington, two Pentagon officials said the tactic has been used at least three times since Jan. 28, when a truck carrying explosives and a chlorine tank blew up in Anbar province. More than a dozen people were reported killed.

The AP report is very pointedly pointing out that Sunni Muslims did this. How they know that exactly, they do not explain. But it does not matter who is doing it. They are killing innocent civilians with the most awful weapons they can get their hands on. Is there any doubt that they WILL use worse weapons if they can get them?

Is there any doubt they will use those weapons on Americans with as much - or considerably more - gusto if they can? In America? The left denies that "some guy in a cave" is anything to worry about. What if the cave has a supply of chlorine gas? What if it has biological weapons? What if it has a few nukes? The argument today is pull out of Iraq, turn a blind eye to the genocide that ensues, just ignore the damage to the United States that such a withdrawal will entail and go home. But this time, they will follow us. And they have already shown what they are capable and willing to do. What will the left do then? What happens when the phrase "Here there be monsters" describes the city they are living in?

Are you willing to bet your life? How about your children's lives? Your entire family?  Will your statistical arguments mean a thing when it is someone you love at ground zero? Really? Are you really sure?

Here there be monsters.

Cowdini!

Massachusetts police had a run in with the Great Cowdini, bovine escape artist extraordinare, in the middle of the night. After freeing herself from barbed wire fencing, the escapee led the police on a low speed chase (the cow is a bit overweight, apparently). Then the animal refused to be stopped by a lasso and escaped that, too.

"I gave them the call as reported — a large animal walking down the middle of Route 140 that had large horns," Upton Police Department Dispatcher Debbie LaRose said. "I was going to give Dan one of those red things to see if the cow would follow him back chasing that," said Paula Tripp, who helped chase the cow.

The cow's owners call her "Moo-Cow." During her middle-of-the-night jaunt, she wasn't taking any bull.

The hairy situation started when the Scottish highlander busted a barbed wire fence at her Grafton farm at about 1 a.m. She crossed the line into Upton, where two officers started the chase.

"Although, they did take it seriously. They didn't want someone to run into the bull and get injured. It did make the night go by fast," Upton Police Department Chief Tom Stockwell said.

"Oh yeah, she was mad," Tripp said.

Tripp, a neighbor of the owners who's watching their animals while they travel, joined in on the chase with several friends and a vet.

"We were chasing it up 140, down the side streets, back down to 140," she said.

The cow puffed for four to five miles over four hours before deciding she had had enough of the hot pursuit. After the animal rammed the cruiser, Tripp's friend tripped up the cow with a rodeo-worthy lasso.

Now this indicates a real problem. The Animal Uprising™ has already developed Taser-proof animals. Now they have ones that can't be caught by conventional ropes.

That Was Fast

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi has resigned after only nine months in office. There is some possibility that he will be asked to form a new government. Parliaments can be very odd at times.

ROME - Prime Minister Romano Prodi resigned Wednesday after nine months in office following an embarrassing loss by his center-left government in the Senate on foreign policy, including Italy's military mission in Afghanistan.

Prodi aides did not rule out the possibility that President Giorgio Napolitano would ask Prodi to try to form a new government, and from first discussions among some allies, support for another Prodi government seemed to be building.

"We are ready to reconfirm our full faith in the Prodi government," said Dario Franceschini, a leader of the Olive Tree, the largest grouping in Prodi's coalition.

Napolitano's office said political consultations would begin Thursday on which leaders might have enough support to form a new government. In the meantime, it said, the president, who met with Prodi on Wednesday night, had asked him to stay on in a caretaker role.

The loss, by two votes in the Senate, came on a bid by Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema to rally the often bickering partners in the coalition, which range from Christian Democrats to Communists.

He was hoping to the allies would close ranks in the vote on foreign policy, including Italy's military mission in Afghanistan, but his bid backfired.

The proximate cause of the entire thing was the hard left's refusal to back deployment of Italian troops in Afghanistan. (Which is very, very likely the next step in this country if the left forces troops out of Iraq.)

The Real Mall Rats

Oh sure, there was a Kevin Smith film named Mallrats that was pretty soundly panned by the critics. (Even though it features appearances by Jay and Silent Bob.) And people have called teenyboppers who hang out in malls Mall Rats for years, I can't even remember how long ago I first heard the term. Someone probably coined it about a week after the first indoor shopping mall opened. But in Atlanta, they are gearing up to deal with the real thing. Mall rats, as in actual rats who are occupying an abandoned mall near a residential area. The locals are terrified of the waves of ravening rodents that will be unleashed when the mall is stormed by the authorities. Or torn down to make way for a Wal-Mart, which is the cover story the authorities are using to avoid terrorizing the public.

Avonwood, an Avondale Estates neighborhood of tidy brick ranch houses next to the mall, expects to be the front line.

Homeowners have found a sympathetic ear at City Hall.

"Whenever you tear a building down, the roaches and rats will run," City Manager Ron Rabun said. "You knock it down, and here they come."

Avonwood has battled rats for years, said Terry Giager, a former community association president, and homeowners blame the giant, empty building to the south. The 360,900-square-foot mall closed five years ago.

Neighbors suspect rats live in the mall, then roam north to scavenge in their yards from trash, bird feeders and leftovers in dog bowls. They often invade homes.

Giager has volunteered his time as the rat go-to guy. He removed 17 rats under one woman's house, he said, then helped her rat-proof the place.

Now the neighborhood worries that rats of "Willard" proportions will stampede north toward their homes. There's no major road between the neighborhood and the mall to stop them.

Oh, heck. This is going to make Willard look tame. One of our borderline psychotic more unusual informants reports that the rats have actually been barricaded in the mall demanding free cheese. When the authorities finally storm the place, expect massive "rodent wave" attacks. You heard it here first.

Subversive Snow Squirrels

People continue to deny the reality of the Animal Uprising™ and think some of the animal warlord's most dangerous shock troops are "cute". So it is with a frightening wave of sightings of the animal alpine troops, the white-suited shock squirrels. These ravening rodents are acting cute and cuddly and winning people and dogs over to the unholy cause of the animal insurgency.

WARE, England, Feb. 20 (UPI) — A rare white squirrel named "Whitey" has taken up residence at a Ware, England, estate where he has cozied up to the owners' terrier.

Movie prop maker Terry Goulden tells the Daily Mail he first saw Whitey four years ago and started leaving him food on the window ledge.

The squirrel quickly learned to tap on the window and now he comes every morning for a breakfast of peanuts and visit with his friend, Trampas the border terrier.

We noted an earlier sighting of one of the alpine shock troops here. But lest you think it only happens in the British Isles, here's a frightening video report from Louisville. Be afraid.

Britain To Reduce Troops

The headlines are all trumpeting that Tony Blair has announced a British "withdrawal plan" for British troops in Iraq. Reading this report, however, says that there is an announced reduction, not a withdrawal - if specific conditions are met with possible future reductions as well. It is not a complete cut and run, at least not as it stands today. That is not to say that it is particularly great news. But Blair is specifically rejecting an irresponsible, precipitous withdrawal.

LONDON - Britain will withdraw about 1,600 troops from Iraq in coming months if local forces can secure the southern part of the country, Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday.

"The actual reduction in forces will be from the present 7,100 — itself down from over 9,000 two years ago and 40,000 at the time of the conflict — to roughly 5,500," Blair told the House of Commons.

He told lawmakers that "increasingly our role will be support and training, and our numbers will be able to reduce accordingly."

Blair said Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had agreed to the plan.

Dependent on Iraqi capability Britain would draw down further, "possibly to below 5,000" once a base at Basra Palace is transferred to Iraqi control in late summer, Blair said.

"What all of this means is not that Basra is how we want it to be. But it does mean that the next chapter in Basra's history can be written by Iraqis," Blair said.

There is, predictably, a firestorm of commentary on this in the blogosphere. It ranges from the predictable crowing from the left to somewhat unhappy from some on the right. But fair number of folks are not seeing this as all that bad news, just that it comes at a fairly awkward time, what with American troops increasing. It should be kept in mind that Basra has always been less of a problem than Baghdad.

Tell Me Again…..

….Why Sandy "Socks" Berger is not in jail? The Washington Post has more details about the way the Berger document stealing was mishandled at the time it occurred. Even the head of the 9/11 Commission is extremely unhappy about how little they were told by Justice Department officials before they had Berger under oath to testify. Had they known about what Berger did, more and different questions would have been asked.

Under debate during the Nov. 23, 2004, meeting was Brachfeld's contention that President Clinton's former national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger could have stolen original, uncatalogued, highly classified terrorism documents 14 months earlier by wrapping them around his socks and beneath his pants, as National Archives staff member John Laster reported witnessing.

Brachfeld said he was worried that during four visits in 2002 and 2003, Berger had the opportunity to remove more than the five documents he admitted taking. Brachfeld wanted the Justice Department to notify officials of the 9/11 Commission that Berger's actions — in combination with a bungled Archives response — might have obstructed the commission's review of Clinton's terrorism policies.

The Justice Department spurned the advice, and some of Brachfeld's colleagues at the Archives greeted his warnings with accusations of disloyalty. But more than three years later, as Brachfeld and House lawmakers have pushed new details about Berger's actions onto the public record — such as Berger's use of a construction site near the Archives to temporarily hide some of the classified documents — Brachfeld's contentions have attracted fresh support……

…..The committee further argued that the 9/11 Commission should have been told more about Berger and about Brachfeld's concerns, a suggestion that resonated with Philip Zelikow, the commission's former executive director.

Zelikow said in an interview last week that "I think all of my colleagues would have wanted to have all the information at the time that we learned from the congressional report, because that would have triggered some additional questions, including questions we could have posed to Berger under oath."

The commission's former general counsel, Dan Marcus, now an American University law professor, separately expressed surprise at how little the Justice Department told the commission about Berger and said it was "a little unnerving" to learn from the congressional report exactly what Berger reviewed at the Archives and what he admitted to the FBI — including that he removed and cut up three copies of a classified memo.

When Socks committed his Bergerlary a real effort to find out exactly what he stole should have been launched. Instead, he escaped with a sweetheart of a plea bargain agreement. Who covered for this man and why? Personally, I think that should be looked into - hard.

Senator Tim Johnson Discharged From Hospital

South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson has been discharged from the hospital and has entered a rehabilitation facility. His family is not telling the media where that facility is located.

More than two months after suffering a brain hemorrhage, Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) has left a Washington hospital and entered a private rehabilitation facility, his office said yesterday.

A spokeswoman refused to say whether the senator remained in Washington or was moved to a facility in South Dakota, citing family concerns about media scrutiny.

Frankly, I don't blame them for not wanting to tell the media. But this appears to be another hopeful sign for Johnson and his family. Keep him in your thoughts.

With Friends Like These

The Washington Post has an article describing the onslaught that the left has launched on Representative Ellen Tauscher, the leader of the centrist New Democrat Coalition. It details the the outright intimidation tactics, including threats to occupy one of her district offices. Now there is nothing wrong with activists pressuring their representatives. But this crosses a line, I think.

Progressive blogs — including two new ones, Ellen Tauscher Weekly and Dump Ellen Tauscher — were bashing her as a traitor to her party. A new liberal political action committee had just named her its "Worst Offender." And in Tauscher's East Bay district office that day in January, eight MoveOn.org activists were accusing her of helping President Bush send more troops to Iraq.

Helping? Jennifer Barton, the lawmaker's district director, played them a DVD of Tauscher blasting the increase as an awful idea in a floor speech eight days earlier.

"The words are fine and good, but we are looking for leadership," scoffed Susan Schaller, one of the activists.

Leadership? Barton showed them the eight golden shovels Tauscher had received for bringing transportation projects to her suburban district, along with numerous awards she had won for her work protecting children, wetlands, affordable housing and abortion rights.

"That's fine and good," Schaller repeated, "but this is about Iraq."

The anti-Tauscher backlash illustrates how the Democratic takeover has energized and emboldened the party's liberal base, ratcheting up the pressure on the party's moderates…….

…..Democratic leaders want their activists to focus on beating Republicans. But the grass roots and Net roots believe the political tide is shifting their way, and they can provide the money, ground troops and buzz to challenge Democratic incumbents they don't like. MoveOn.org had two Bay Area chapters before the election; now it has 15, and they could all go to work against Tauscher in a primary. "Absolutely, we could take her out," said Markos Moulitsas Zúniga — better known as Kos — the Bay Area blogger behind the influential Daily Kos site……

…….She has annoyed the left by supporting legislation to scale back the estate tax, tighten bankruptcy rules and promote free-trade agreements. She served as vice chair of the pro-business Democratic Leadership Council, which many liberal activists dismiss as a quasi-Republican K Street front group. And she voted to authorize the Iraq war, although she did so with caveats, and she was quick to express her displeasure with its execution.

But liberal groups such as the Children's Defense Fund and the League of Conservation Voters give Tauscher impeccable report cards, while the National Rifle Association gives her straight F's.

This is very close to the situation that drove Joe Lieberman into running as an independent. There is a real danger to the Democratic party if they veer this hard to the left. The front group that is behind a lot of this pressure is "Working For Us". But when that group targeted Tauscher, the coalition that formed it in the first place fragmented.

Working for Us was created in January by a coalition of bloggers, trial lawyers and labor leaders, the trifecta of Democratic interest groups. But once the group took aim at Tauscher, the trial lawyers quietly withdrew. And Tauscher soon met for a glass of wine with Andy Stern, the feisty liberal who runs the Service Employees International Union; he assured her of his union's support, even though it had helped launch the political action committee. For 12 years, Republicans ran the House according to the "majority of the majority," which meant that the conservative majority within the GOP caucus ruled. Pelosi is trying to run her House according to a consensus of the majority, avoiding legislation that does not have broad Democratic support. She hasn't forced members in swing districts to take tough votes on same-sex marriage, gun control or trade. She is focused on the minimum wage, ethics reform and other issues that can bring together Tauscher and MoveOn.org.

That should indicate the real danger here to the Democrats. I realize the conservatives are also trying to exert pressure with the new Victory Caucus group, but not to these extremes of outright intimidation. There is one other danger here. The media is opening a full-scale offensive against the blogosphere in general and is actively working to paint a picture of an out of control group of fringe elements. The left isn't helping with that image at the moment.

Update: Others: Sister Toldjah, Hot Air, Jammie Wearing Fool,