“Resilient”

I noticed this headline earlier today and was going to get around to to it. But why bother? Jules Crittenden has eviscerated it already.

The AP’s Stephen R. Hurst proclaims the resilience of Sunni insurgents!  

 BAGHDAD (AP) - Sunni insurgents, resilient despite the five-week security crackdown in the capital, killed at least six more American troops over the weekend. A Sunni car bomber hit a largely Shiite district in the capital Sunday, killing at least eight people.

I’m getting a warm and fuzzy Pravda kind of feel off that, the ”resilience.”  Stalwart insurgents resiliently marching forward! You have to troll the North Korean web to find that kind of thing these days!

The next three paragraphs are devoted to American death, spiced up with phrases like the one about Anbar being “controlled by the Sunni insurgency.” I’m concerned that might be somewhat overbroad, when you consider the significant influence of both the U.S. and Iraqi military and pro-government tribes have over what goes on in Anbar. But that’s what good propaganda is all about! Then we get to this:

While U.S. and Iraqi troops have flooded the Baghdad streets and a heavily armored American column was sent north to adjacent Diyala province, attacks on American and Iraqi forces have been robust.

The resilient enemy is also robust! Strangely, no mention of the “dozens” of resilient, robuts insurgents who were granted martyrdom in that action. But let’s not dawdle about the trivial details. We’ll get to those, such as the “violence down” later. We’re following AP’s schedule, and AP is playing gotcha!  Any action or reaction by terrorists who have been severely set back is a sign of surge failure, and must be played high, resiliently and robustly.  All American statements must be buried, carefully selected and couched to suggest futility.

Do go over and read the whole thing. Jules is merciless.

Do go over and read the whole thing. Jules is merciless.

Lest You Think….

…..That every, single informant the Crabitat has is somewhat off-center, we present the following email. The famed mystery writer JA Jance actually reads this blog - and sends along tidbits about the Animal Uprising™ when she isn't busy signing books on promotional tours. (Where do you think we got the information about moose lynchings, anyway?) But she was kind enough to send along an email about an animal that has not gone over to the dark side. A hero who has not abandoned her human family. JA Jance's family, in fact. Here's the email she sent:

Dear Gaius,
 
I have an anti-animal uprising story.  For the last six weeks,  our family
pet, an aging golden retriever has fought a very expensive, life and  death
battle with a fungal infection that damn near killed her.  In fact  there were
days when we were sure she was going to have to be put  down.
 
In the past few days–since Tuesday of this week, in fact, she's  finally
been on the mend, but she's been so sick that we've taken to sleeping  with our
bedroom door open so, if she needed to toss her cookies, she could go  outside
to do so.  And being a good golden, she has done so on numerous  occasions.
 
Last night, with my husband and me both asleep in our bed, Daphne  suddenly
went nuts.  We awakened to find a STRANGER walking through our  bedroom and out
the open patio slider, with Daph at his heels raising  cane.  In eight years
I've NEVER heard Daphne that furious before.   The front door deadbolt hadn't
been completely engaged, the intruder, a heavily  medicated, developmentally
disabled AWOL inmate from a local group home,  had let himself in to our house
through the front door, eaten one of Daphne's  day old donuts in the kitchen
and then wandered into our bedroom trying to find  his way out of the house.
 
Daph has now repaid every penny we spent on her medical care.   And, dog barf
or not, we will be locking our bedroom door  tonight.

Not all of the animals have gone bad. There is still hope that the menace of the Animal Uprising™ can be defeated! Golden retrievers especially are still friends of humans. They may not be particularly bright when you pet them (the lights go right out, as any golden owner will tell you. I know, I owned one.) but they are utterly loyal. I'd buy Daphne a dozen or so nice, fresh Krispy-Kreme doughnuts after that performance. The good ones with the frosting!

Puzzled Looks

I was tipped to this article in the New York Times (of all places) by the Newsbusters site (Tim Graham writing). This is an enormously revealing article about the anti-war protests in Washington, DC yesterday. Probably a lot more revealing than ANSWER would like, in fact.

Judging by the speeches and placards, the marchers on Saturday set their sights on sweeping goals, including not only ending the war but also impeaching President Bush and ending the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Many carried Answer Coalition signs bearing the image of the Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara.

Brian Becker, the national coordinator of the Answer Coalition and a member of the Party of Socialism and Liberation, said the group held out little hope of influencing either the president or Congress. “It is about radicalizing people,” Mr. Becker said in an interview. “You hook into a movement that exists — in this case the antiwar movement — and channel people who care about that movement and bring them into political life, the life of political activism.” (Emphasis added)

In a speech before the march, Cindy Sheehan, who made headlines in 2005 camping outside the Mr. Bush’s Texas ranch after her son was killed in Iraq, called the president and his military advisers “war criminals.”

“We want the people in the White House out of our house and arrested for crimes against humanity,” Ms. Sheehan said.

As they gathered before the march, the protesters met what several veterans of the antiwar movement described as an unusually large contingent of several hundred counterdemonstrators. Many were veterans in biker jackets who said they had come to protect the nearby Vietnam Memorial, citing rumors that had circulated among veterans groups that the demonstrators planned to deface it.

Crossing the bridge toward the Pentagon, the marchers met another group of about 50 counterdemonstrators by the Arlington Cemetery, one holding a sign that said: “Go to hell traitors. You dishonor our dead on hallowed ground.”

Near the Pentagon, police officers in riot gear spread across the road, effectively blocking the demonstrators from approaching the building. Five people were arrested by the Pentagon Force Protection Agency for “failure to obey a lawful order,” said Cheryl Irwin, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Many in the crowd said they were unfamiliar with the Answer Coalition and puzzled by the many signs about socialism. Several said they had come from across the country for a chance to voice their dismay at the war. (Emphasis added) 

Just a question. Is it more dismaying to be against the war or to find you have associated yourselves with people who want the US overthrown? Inquiring minds would - very seriously - like to know. Are the folks who went just to protest the war happy with keeping company with folks who think a murderous, mass-murdering thug is a hero? Really? Are you sure? Or are you being used by manipulative agitators who are trying to overthrow your country? Figure it out for yourselves. You have been "hooked" into for purposes you never intended. And you are being used - very, very thoroughly.

Mutant Squirrel Dogs And Pending Sleep Deprivation

The problem with reporting about the Animal Uprising™ is that after a while, you tend to sit bolt upright at night out of a sound sleep and say to yourself, "Oh, no! What if….(Fill in blank)." Well, you say it to yourself if you don't want to get punched by your significant other, anyway. But you get the picture. Sometimes, worst case scenarios just pop into your head. Happens all the time around here, as we explain, fairly regularly these days, to that nice man from the health department who visits more and more often. (We think he likes the cookies we serve with the tea.)

But we never even came close to predicting this one. A story from Arkansas about mutant squirrel dogs that even we couldn't have come up with. No really.

DRIGGS, AR–This story may seem a little nuts, but maybe because it's about a squirrel dog that doesn't hunt them.  Instead, the momma dog from Driggs, Arkansas decided to raise one as her own son.  When the Wootton Family set out to save a baby squirrel, they had no idea what would happen.

"She licks it like it's her baby and takes care of it like it is her young," Kathy Wootton said as she smiled.

They are an odd little family: the momma Maltese named Pitty Pat, her little girl pup, and yes, her adopted son the squirrel.

Cousins Caleb and Josh heard the infant's cries for help nearly two weeks ago.

"We thought it was a baby chicken or something, so we came over here and it was a baby squirrel in the tree," Josh explained.

So, Josh's mom Kathy climbed the ladder to rescue the baby that was barely clinging to life and a limb.  The Forest Service told the family that an owl probably attacked the nest and the baby squirrel was the only survivor.

"Told me just good luck with it and hoped that we raised him up," Kathy said.

And that's just what she set out to do.  She put the squirrel with the momma dog to help keep it warm and bottle fed the baby for four days, but then on the fifth…

"When I went to get it, it was nursing the mother dog," Kathy exclaimed.

Look, we hate to be alarmist around here. We're all about calm and reasonable reporting about the horrors of the Animal Uprising™.  But think of how deadly dogs that can climb trees will be! This is no laughing matter. We once spent a month in Arkansas over a weekend, so we know that is a very odd corner of the country. But seriously, we aren't real sure we'll be able to sit bolt upright out of a sound sleep tonight.

We may never sleep again, worrying about mutant squirrel dogs dropping on our heads from trees.

Hubris

The true believers from the First Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of Global Warming® are absolutely convinced that man's activities are causing disastrous consequences for the entire planet. So, logically, they are now proposing massive activities to change the climate which entail disastrous consequences.

This is complete and utter insanity.

WASHINGTON - When climate scientist Andrew Weaver considers the idea of tinkering with Earth's air, water or sunlight to fight global warming, he remembers the lessons of a favorite children's book.

In the book, a cheese-loving king's castle is infested with mice. So the king brings in cats to get rid of the mice. Then the castle's overrun with cats, so he brings in dogs to get rid of them, then lions to get rid of the dogs, elephants to get rid of the lions, and finally, mice to get rid of the elephants.

That scenario in "The King, the Mice and the Cheese," by Nancy and Eric Gurney, should give scientists pause before taking extreme measures to mess with Mother Nature, says Weaver of the University of Victoria.

However, in recent months, several scientists are considering doing just that.

They are exploring global warming solutions that sound wholly far-fetched, including giant artificial "trees" that would filter carbon dioxide out of the air, a bizarre "solar shade" created by a trillion flying saucers that lower Earth's temperature, and a scheme that mimics a volcano by spewing light-reflecting sulfates high in the sky.

These are costly projects of last resort — in case Earth's citizens don't cut back fast enough on greenhouse gas emissions and the worst of the climate predictions appear not too far away. Unfortunately, the solutions could cause problems of their own — beyond their exorbitant costs — including making the arid Middle East even drier and polluting the air enough to increase respiratory illnesses.

Kevin Trenberth, climate analysis chief at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said mankind already has harmed Earth's climate inadvertently, so it's foolish to think that people can now fix it with a few drastic measures.

But at Trenberth's same Boulder, Colo., research center, climate scientist Tom Wigley is exploring that mock volcano idea.

"It's the lesser of two evils here (the other being doing nothing)," Wigley said. "Whatever we do, there are bad consequences, but you have to judge the relative badness of all the consequences."

Wow. Talk about hubris. Man's activities cause everything, so trigger another, even larger, environmental disaster - this time a very real one - to combat one that a lot of scientists do not believe is happening at all. Here's a cheap and dirty solution. Let Iran get nuclear weapons. When they do, they will use them. That will trigger the nuclear winter we were warned about endlessly back when the unilateral disarmament crowd was really screeching. Really, they said that was the absolute, gilt-edged ultimate TRUTH™ back then. So was the "Population Bomb" and the "Silent Spring". And countless other absolute truths that must not be ignored just in my lifetime.

These people really are out of their minds. And they call those who disagree with them "deniers".

Gorezilla’s White Mountains

White mountains of mining waste, that is. The Tennessean hammers Al Gore for his zinc strip mining interests in Tennessee. He made a bundle of money off it until it closed in 2003. Now, new owners want to resume operations. Frankly, I think the mine can be run with minimal - but not zero - environmental impact. But this is one more thing where the public persona of Al Gore as environmental savior runs afoul of his pedestrian money-grubbing. I'm sure he'll assuage his guilt by buying a few more indulgences for himself, from himself.

New owners plan to start mining again later this year, after nearly four years of inactivity. In addition to bringing 250 much-needed jobs to rural Middle Tennessee, mine owners will resume paying royalties to some residents who, like Gore, own land adjacent to the mine and lease access to the zinc under their property.

Gore has yet to be approached by the new owner, Strategic Resource Acquisition, said his spokeswoman Kalee Kreider, and he and wife, Tipper, have not decided whether they will renew their lease. It was terminated when the mine closed in 2003.

Last week, Gore sent a letter asking the company to work with Earthworks, a national environmental group, to make sure the operation doesn’t damage the environment.

“We would like for you to engage with us in a process to ensure that the mine becomes a global example of environmental best practices,” Gore wrote.

Victor Wyprysky, the company’s president and chief executive officer, did not respond to requests for comment on the letter.

The letter was sent the week after The Tennessean’s Washington bureau posed questions to the former vice president about his involvement with the mine.

Previous mine owners released toxic substances into waterways above the allowable levels several times in the eight years before the mine closed.

Much like Gorezilla's mammoth appetite for electricity and private jetting about spouting about his movie, his being party to strip mining makes a lot of what he preaches ring very hollow, indeed. Do read the details of how Gorezilla acquired the interest in the property in the first place. It is a classic, with his daddy making a sweetheart deal for him. It kind of defines just how different life and economics are for the professional political class. (Regardless of party, incidentally).

UPDATE: Others: Maggie's Farm, ShopFloor, Instapundit, Scared Monkeys, PoliPundit, Bill Hobbs,

The Biggest Lie - Redux

Orson Scott Card, who I believe to be both a brilliant writer and someone who gets his facts straight, has a very, very powerful column posted at the Ornery American that should be required reading. He presents the case that the "consensus" on Global warming is as much of a fraud as the entire body of "proof" that started the whole ball of hot air rolling in the first place. (Many thanks to Blackhawk for bringing this to my attention in the comments section of another post.)

Here's a story you haven't heard, and you should have.

An intelligence source, working for a government agency. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. He uses computers to crunch numbers and at the end of his work, out pops the truth that was hiding in the original data. Let's call him "Mann."

The trouble with Mann is, he has an ideology. He knows what he wants his results to be. And the original numbers aren't giving him that data. So the agency he works for won't be able to persuade people to fight the war he wants to fight.

Well, that's not acceptable.

Cooking the Figures

He starts with his software. There are certain procedures that are normal and accepted in his line of work. But if he makes just one little mistake, his program does a weird little recursion and if there's any data at all that shows the pattern he wants it to show, it will be magnified 139 times, so it far overshadows all the other data.

He can run it on random numbers and it gives him the shape he wants. Unfortunately, the real-world numbers aren't random — they have a very different shape. All the numbers. Even his jimmied program won't give the results he wants.

All he needs is any data shaped the right way. And so he looks a little farther, and … here it is. It looks, on the surface, like all the other data that he's been working with. Other researchers working in his field, just glancing at it, will assume it is, too.

But it isn't. Because the source that gathered this batch of data had some other key information that takes it all away. The numbers don't mean what they normally mean. In fact, this number set is absolutely false.

If you use these numbers along with all the other data, however, the clever little program will pick them up, magnify them radically, and voilá! The final report shows exactly the shape he needs the numbers to have.

The trouble is, these numbers are supposed to be doublechecked. Anybody who looks closely at his numbers and at his program will see what he's done. It's not hard to find, if you have the original data sets and can examine the program. He will be exposed as a fraud. It will do his cause more harm than good, if it's made public.

But he's not afraid. He knows how this works.

He doesn't show the program or the lists of his data sources to anybody.

Read the whole thing. This actually gets right to the heart of the problem as I see it. If the entire foundation that all the other "proof" is built off is fraudulent, then the entire edifice is built on nothing. Seriously, this is an important column for people to read. If all the cited information is correct, there is a very, very good reason that the true believers are trying desperately to stifle anyone who disagrees with them.

Because they know the entire thing is a fraud.

Dismantling Gorezilla

Jonathan Last lets Al "Gorezilla" Gore off the hook far too lightly for his hypocrisy about energy. I happen to think it is a very big deal that he uses gargantuan quantities of energy while preaching that other folks have to cut back. He uses the modern equivalent of medieval indulgences to offset his carbon sins, which is yet another problem. Nonetheless, Last systematically dismantles Gore's four main, mutually dependent, assertions. He does so quite logically, which will, of course, place him on the enemies list being compiled by the true believers from the First Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of Global Warming®.

The post-Oscar attacks on Al Gore for living in a mansion that consumes 20 times as much energy as the average American house were enjoyable, but unfair.

Gore's consumption of fossil fuels has nothing to do with the arguments he has been advancing about climate change. After all, his thesis is empirical, not subjective.

It doesn't matter a lick whether Al Gore is a hypocrite. What matters is whether or not he is right.

Gore proposes essentially four assertions, which build conditionally:

(1) Earth's climate is getting warmer; (2) man is responsible in substantial part for this change;

(3) this change will result in net harm; and (4) this change can be reversed by man.

Let's take them in order.

Here is what we know for certain about climate change: In the last 100 years, the average temperature on Earth has risen 1 degree Fahrenheit.

This is not unprecedented. Throughout history, the planet has gone through temperature cycles. There have been "warm periods" and ice ages.

To take just one example, Swiss climatologists believe that the glaciers in the Alps have melted into near nothingness 10 times in the last 10,000 years.

Read the whole thing. It is very well put together and strongly refutes the four assertions Gorezilla's take relies on. The one thing that is extremely bothersome about this entire brouhaha is that the true believers are arguing essentially for a completely static climate. This has never been the case on this planet. The climate has varied wildly over and over and over. Man certainly had nothing to do with all those other swings. There is a certain grandiose hubris on full display from those who say all these climate changes are the fault of man's activities. Now, if we want to address the cessation of burning fossil fuels for energy, that is a worthwhile discussion. But the answer probably is going to involve nuclear power - something the ecologically-driven fringe blocked for decades. With an astonishingly similar campaign to what is being used right now by the warming enthusiasts, mind you.

Jailbreak!

Australian authorities, having surrendered to the Animal Uprising™ some time ago, are covering up for the animals now. A gang of reptile reprobates who had been safely held in an Australian animal prison have escaped (they called it a "wildlife park", but we know what it really was). These reptiles, criminals by even animal standards, were led by "Baby" Crocodile, a well known assassin. That's what our informants tell us, anyway. Well, we think that's what he said before he lost consciousness.

MELBOURNE, Australia - Thieves stole a baby crocodile and more than 50 snakes and lizards from an Australian wildlife park, officials said.

Jason Watson, owner of the Wildlife Wonderland park in southern Victoria state, said workers found reptile tanks raided on Sunday morning. A 23-inch freshwater crocodile, 47 blue tongue lizards, three bearded dragons and two pythons were missing.

Sure, blame the humans. Just wait until this bunch start knocking over banks. The authorities will probably blame the robberies on midgets, though, rather than admit they allowed this gang to run free.

Iraqis Glad Saddam Gone

The Times of London points to the results of a new poll that show Iraqis overwhelmingly favor the current government, warts and all, over the regime of Saddam Hussein. The poll will be completely ignored by the anti-war crowd, of course. Except to heap abuse on it. But the results are actually kind of interesting.

DESPITE sectarian slaughter, ethnic cleansing and suicide bombs, an opinion poll conducted on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq has found a striking resilience and optimism among the inhabitants.

The poll, the biggest since coalition troops entered Iraq on March 20, 2003, shows that by a majority of two to one, Iraqis prefer the current leadership to Saddam Hussein’s regime, regardless of the security crisis and a lack of public services.

The survey, published today, also reveals that contrary to the views of many western analysts, most Iraqis do not believe they are embroiled in a civil war.

Officials in Washington and London are likely to be buoyed by the poll conducted by Opinion Research Business (ORB), a respected British market research company that funded its own survey of 5,019 Iraqis over the age of 18.

The poll shows a marked increase in confidence since the announcement of the surge. Longtime readers know I am not a big one for automatically taking a single poll as the gospel truth. The trends of polls are more informative than a single datapoint. (Movies rather than snapshots, if you will.) But there is a trend here that shows confidence is on the rise. That is worth thinking about. If the Iraqis begin to see that the terrorists are not a good bet for the long term, support for them will erode rapidly.

UPDATE: Others: Don Surber, Captain's Quarters, Wake up America, NewsBusters, Outside The Beltway, Gateway Pundit, Strata-Sphere, Harry's Place, TigerHawk, PoliPundit, Jules Crittenden, Dean's World, Protein Wisdom,

A Day Of Surprises

This is very interesting, indeed. The Washington Post has an editorial which, while taking every opportunity to bash the administration, still comes down - forcefully - against a rapid withdrawal from Iraq. They flat demolish the "Bush Lied!" meme as well.

Clearly we were insufficiently skeptical of intelligence reports. It would almost be comforting if Mr. Bush had "lied the nation into war," as is frequently charged. The best postwar journalism instead suggests that the president and his administration exaggerated, cherry-picked and simplified but fundamentally believed — as did the CIA — the catastrophically wrong case that then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell presented to the United Nations.

The question that Gen. David H. Petraeus posed (as recounted in Rick Atkinson's history, "In the Company of Soldiers") as he led the troops of his 101st Airborne Division from Kuwait across the Iraq border, "Tell me how this ends?" — that question must be the first to be asked, not the last. The answer won't always be knowable. But the discussion must never lose sight of the inevitable horrors of war. It must not be left to the generals in the field. And it must assume, based on experience from Germany to Korea to Afghanistan, that a U.S. commitment, once embarked upon, will not soon be over.

We raised such issues in our prewar editorials but with insufficient force. In February 2003, for example, we wrote that "the president [must] finally address, squarely and in public, the question of how Iraq will be secured and governed after a war that removes Saddam Hussein, and what the U.S. commitment to that effort will be. . . . Who will rule Iraq, and how? Who will provide security? How long will U.S. troops remain? . . . Many of these questions appear not to have been answered even inside the administration. . . ." They were still unanswered when the war, which we nevertheless supported, began. That should never happen again.

Even now, though, many of the lessons that others draw from Iraq do not strike us as obvious.

Unquestionably, for example, the experience has shown the risks of preemptive war. Yet it remains true in an era of ruthless, suicidal terrorists and easily smuggled weapons of unimaginable destructive power that not acting also can be dangerous. The risks of war with North Korea or Iran are evident; but the cost of leaving nuclear weapons in the hands of a Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or a Kim Jong Il may not become evident until the price has been paid. And while Iraq illustrates the importance of challenging intelligence estimates, there will also be risks in waiting for certainty that may never be achievable.

Please read the whole thing. I do not agree with everything they write, but they may be sending a signal here, I think. The signal is to the cut and run crowd. The media cover they have enjoyed up until now may be eroding as responsible media (is there such a thing?) looks at the implications of a rapid withdrawal and do not like what they see. It may get a bit harder for the anti-war crowd in the near future as a result.

Surprise

The Washington Post actually mentions the Gathering of Eagles counter-protest yesterday in Washington. They make the folks who attended seem like they were just being nasty to the anti-war protesters, but I'm frankly surprised as all heck that they even mention that the demonstration occurred at all.

As war protesters marched toward Arlington Memorial Bridge en route to the Pentagon yesterday, they were flanked by long lines of military veterans and others who stood in solidarity with U.S. troops and the Bush administration's cause in Iraq. Many booed loudly as the protesters passed, turned their backs to them or yelled, "If you don't like America, get out!"

Several thousand vets, some of whom came by bus from New Jersey, car caravans from California or flights from Seattle or Michigan, lined the route from the bridge and down 23rd Street, waving signs such as "War There Or War Here." Their lines snaked around the corner and down several blocks of Constitution Avenue in what organizers called the largest gathering of pro-administration counter-demonstrators since the war began four years ago.

The vets turned both sides of Constitution into a bitter, charged gantlet for the war protesters. "Jihadists!" some vets screamed. "You're brain-dead!" Others chanted, "Workers World traitors must hang!" — a reference to the Communist newspaper. Some broke into "The Star-Spangled Banner" as war protesters sought to hand out pamphlets.

"Bunch of hooligans in motorcycle jackets!" one war protester shot back.

As opposed to the thoughtful and enlightened screeching from the folks who try to break through police lines like this, I suppose. Bunch of thugs in Birkenstocks? Seriously, I think the strength of the Gathering of Eagle actually shocked the media. Those that are not actually hiding that it occurred at all (read New York Times) are having a hard time dealing with the fact that their imposed narrative on the war and how the public must feel about it is not working with a very large segment of the population. The Democrats who are betting the farm on an American defeat might want to take a very hard look at this. This indicates that the imparted wisdom of the press and the polls may not be a good indicator of how the nation really feels. I still maintain that the Democrats are making a serious mistake with their behavior toward the war. They were not given a mandate by voters to lose a war. The sharp turn to the left that the Dems are making will hurt them in the long run.