Looming Train Wreck

I probably shouldn't point this out and simply let it happen. But Dan Gerstein brings it up over at The Politico, so it isn't exactly a big secret. He posts that the nutroots are now gearing up for a flat-out "impeach Bush" effort. And a full scale struggle for control of the Democratic party as well. Mind you that Gerstein is loathed by the nutroots more than George W. Bush, if that's possible. But read his words first:

Two weeks ago, Sheehan threatened to launch a primary campaign against Pelosi in her San Francisco district unless Pelosi agreed to begin the process of impeachment against President Bush by July 23—the day Sheehan wraps up her latest anti-war protest tour with a publicity raid on the Capitol.

The speaker’s spokesman confirmed a few days ago that impeachment remains “off the table.” So on Monday, we can expect the gloves to come off between the left’s two leading ladies.

It will be tempting to write this off as just another piece of attention-getting street theater by Sheehan—who just two months ago announced she was retiring from the protest movement —or your run of the mill, fringe-fueled family feud that Democrats once were famous for. But to do so would be to oversimplify what this spat is about and underestimate why it matters.

The reality is that the coming Golden Gate Bridge Brawl is a pivotal proxy fight—similar to but bigger than the recent family squabble over the Fox debate—for a much bigger existential conflict within the Democratic Party between the D.C. establishment and the grassroots. Hanging in the balance is not just next year’s national election, but long-term control of the Democratic brand.

This conflict, which, unlike most recent intra-party dust-ups, is largely about tactics and tone, not issues and ideas, has been simmering ever since Howard Dean launched his campaign to take back the party in 2003. It was put on the back burner last year as Democrats united to win back both houses of Congress.

Gerstein also points out that the Democratic Congressional leadership was darn near heckled off the stage by nutroots activists at a rally. All this bodes ill, as Gerstein tries to point out.

Dean and company will be under a lot of pressure from the establishment to hew to Pelosi’s line and definitively rule out impeachment as an option. Most leading party strategists I have talked with say that mounting an impeachment push now would be, in the words of one pollster, “about the dumbest thing we can do.”

Trumpet flourish: Enter the nutroots. An absolute, iron-clad guaranteed losing strategy: force impeachment. Count the nutroots in! The Republicans fell into that worthless mess themselves a few years ago. The voters promptly beat hell out of them. The nutroots, incorrectly, think they can do it right because truth, justice and the American way are on their side. In fact it is truthiness, echo chamber demagoguery and political ineptitude that they have working for them right now. They are setting the Democratic party up for a surprise - not a good one, either. Because regardless of the handy poll results the nutroots think they have on their side, the voters will punish the Dems if they go that route. But heck - no lefty will believe me (or Gerstein) on that, so carry on.

Empty-Headed Demagoguery

Empty-headed demagoguery from Russ Feingold today. He wants to "censure" President Bush - an empty, meaningless gesture designed to placate his more rabid base elements since he is undoubtedly smart enough to realize that a) despite the wish-upon-a-star maunderings of the far left, George Bush has not done anything to warrant impeachment and b) even if the more rabid elements could kangaroo something up there is absolutely no way in hell that the Senate would convict or remove him. You would never know it from the left, but impeachment means nada - not a damn thing. Bill Clinton is the only living ex-president who was impeached - out of two total. Yet he served his full term, didn't he? (And again, that was not a good move by the Republicans).

Feingold, a prominent war critic, said he soon plans to offer two censure resolutions — measures that would amount to a formal condemnation of the Republican president.

The first would seek to reprimand Bush for, as Feingold described it, getting the nation into war without adequate military preparation and for issuing misleading public statements. The resolution also would cite Vice President Dick Cheney and perhaps other administration officials.

The second measure would seek to censure Bush for what the Democrat called a continuous assault against the rule of law through such efforts as the warrantless surveillance program against suspected terrorists, Feingold said. It would also ask for a reprimand of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and maybe others.

"This is an opportunity for people to say, let's at least reflect on the record that something terrible has happened here," said Feingold, D-Wis. "This administration has weakened America in a way that is frightful."

The only thing frightful here is Feingold's promotion of a useless gesture as something meaningful. Or rather, the acceptance of his rabid base elements that this would actually mean anything outside their echo chambers.

Harry Reid - not the sharpest tool in the shed, is sharper than Feingold, though. He realizes that that little piece of political street theater would be a) empty, meaningless and stupid and b) very, very likely to backfire on the Dems the way Clinton's impeachment did on the Republicans.  But the thrashing on the left about this is highly amusing. Almost as good as the near-orgasmic ecstasy that preceded the Cheney indictment.

With the same result and many of the same breathless performances by the same players. (See Memeorandum.)

UPDATE: More reactions. I was mild. Hot Air, Captain's Quarters, Sister Toldjah, Macsmind, Wake up America, The New Editor, Riehl World View, Bullwinkle Blog, Ian Schwartz,

Justice Denied

A good friend of Blue Crab Boulevard, mystery writer JA Jance has a new book coming out and a new book tour finalized. You can meet JA and get your books signed. Here's a portion of the email I received:

Justice  Denied, J.P. Beaumont # 18!!!! goes on sale everywhere in hardback on July 24.  The last of the tour dates are now finalized and have been posted on the web  site, www.jajance.com……

…..If I'm not coming close to your area this time around,  please be patient. Next time I may be, and when I do, you can be sure I'll be  glad to sign books that you weren't able to have signed this time. My corporate  policy is to leave no book unsigned.

If you're one of my many paperback  readers, Dead Wrong, the most recent Joanna Brady book is now on sale as well,  debuting at #16 on the NYTimes List.

Tour schedule is here. Hopefully, I'll still get tips on the Animal Uprising™ while the tour (which, sadly, comes nowhere near where I live) is in progress. Where else am I going to get pictures of animal vigilante justice?

Times Change

Some readers may know that I am originally from the Adirondack region of New York State. I don't remember living in Lake Placid, I was an infant. But I do remember Saranac Lake and the big house we lived in there. Well, it was bigger when I was small; I've seen it many times since I grew up and it shrunk. We moved away to Rochester, New York when my father was hospitalized in the Canandaigua Veteran's hospital. But my grandmother stayed there in Saranac and my older sister and I would get sent to visit her in the summers, riding unaccompanied on the Trailways bus. Times were different then.

I would also get sent to YMCA summer camp up at Camp Gorham every summer for a full month - courtesy of some charity or other. Mom certainly could not afford it (Dad was dead by then and my Mom was raising five kids alone on a secretary's salary.) We'd make trips and hikes all around the area. I canoed the Fulton Chain several times. Likewise Stillwater Reservoir and Blue Mountain Lake. I also visited the Adirondack Museum at Blue Mountain Lake a number of times. (Both camping and on later trips to visit my Grandmother.)

Well, the Adirondack Museum has reached the 50 year mark, I see. The AP has a nice feature on it today.

BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE, N.Y. - When mining magnate Harold Hochschild bought the Blue Mountain House resort in the middle of the last century, his vision was to create a place that would forever preserve the heritage of the Adirondacks.

Overlooking picturesque Blue Mountain Lake, Hochschild opened a modest museum in 1957 to celebrate the people of Adirondacks — how they lived, worked and played. This year, the Adirondack Museum celebrates its 50th season. But it's no longer just a roadside curiosity. Its gardens, scenic views, events and activities make it a worthy destination for a day - or two - spent wandering the grounds.

"Nobody can believe it's as big as it is, and they are always surprised that it takes them all day to see it, rather than the half-hour they thought," said museum director Caroline Welsh.

The museum has grown from nine buildings to 22, including a 19th century logger's hotel, an artist's cottage, a one-room cabin called the Sunset Cottage, a 1907 one-room school house that now serves as a family activity center, a fire tower, and the Marion River Carry Pavilion, which houses a 1901 steam engine and passenger car and a steamboat called the "Osprey". Each building, Welsh noted, is like its own small museum.

Last year, more than 90,000 visitors viewed the 32-acre museum's collections and exhibits on logging, boats and boating, mining, outdoor recreation, transportation and rustic furniture.

Visitors can tour the extensive grounds and gardens, ride a vintage Adirondack skiff on the boat pond, and dine in the glass-walled museum cafe, which offers "spectacular views of Blue Mountain Lake from halfway up the mountain," Welsh said.

It has certainly grown from the place I remember. Which is a good thing, I think. Too bad they didn't have "skiff" rides back in the day. One assumes they are actually referring to Adirondack Guide Boats, here. These are a very highly refined design - I once toyed with the idea of building one myself and actually have a set of schematics around here somewhere - I think.

I haven't been in the old stomping grounds for a number of years now, but its nice to hear that the museum is thriving.

Tunneling Through Water

That is pretty much exactly what Dutch Engineers are doing to install a new subway system in Amsterdam. The city is built up on what amounts to mud in the first place, with structures supported on pile systems, essentially logs driven into the muck. Digging a new tunnels system through all that mud without destroying the fragile architecture is a real, daily challenge for the designers and the workers. They have come up with a novel way of checking for damage.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands - Seventeenth-century masons built Amsterdam on a foundation of wooden poles planted in soggy, sandy ground, leaving behind a beautiful architectural museum — but one with walls prone to sinking or crumbling without warning. So how do you dig a subway under it?

Very carefully.

Construction of a new "North-South" line for this city of canals and rivers began in 2003, and is presenting Dutch engineers, famed for their ingenuity in keeping this waterlogged nation dry, with devilish challenges.

"The politicians told us: 'We want a subway, we're prepared to pay for it and accept some disruption, but the one thing we absolutely don't want is any damage to the city,'" said Johan Bosch, the project manager. "We need a system so that if things don't go as expected, we don't find out after the damage is irreparable."

The solution: 7,000 mirrors hung in clusters of three on buildings along the 2.4 miles of the route that's underground. Measuring devices shine infrared beams onto each mirror once an hour, measure the reflection, and feed data into a central computer.

After triangulating, the computer raises the alarm if any building shifts more than 0.5 millimeters in any direction. A millimeter is the thickness of a paper clip.

The system, unique on such a large scale, has already told townspeople something they may have guessed but couldn't know for sure: that theirs is a city in motion.

"We now know that whole segments of the city move by themselves, a number of millimeters over the course of a season," Bosch said.

Scheduled for completion in 2013, the $2.4 billion project stretches 5.9 miles in all and will transport an estimated 200,000 people daily, adding a new dimension to Amsterdam's traffic of bicycles, trams, cars, taxis, buses and boats.

It is actually a fascinating article, especially if you enjoy reading about amazing engineering. (It is a Yahoo link, so it is only going to be good for a couple of weeks.) They actually are going to excavate an underground canal, float a tunnels section into it and lower it into place. Tunneling in water. Amazing.

Texas Flood

Well dark clouds are rollin in….man I'm standin out in the rain
Well dark clouds are rollin in….man I'm standin out in the rain
Yeah flood water keep a rollin….man it's about to drive poor me insane
(Davis/Scott, Texas Flood)

The lyrics from what is arguably one of Stevie Ray Vaughan's best known songs are, unfortunately all too appropriate again today. The torrential rains in Texas have returned, this time causing an Amtrack passenger train to become stranded as well as forcing rescue crews to pull more than 50 people from the rising waters. Some areas have received up to 17 inches of rain.

Water covering the tracks in Knippa, about 75 miles west of San Antonio, stopped a westbound Amtrak train carrying 176 passengers at around 9 a.m. Saturday, authorities said. Amtrak spokeswoman Vernae Graham said buses were driving the passengers to El Paso, where they were expected to board another train early Sunday.

The train never lost power, but buses could not reach it until early Saturday evening because of flooded roads, Graham said.

No serious injuries were reported in the state's latest round of flooding, which closed many roads and forced evacuations.

In southern Guadalupe County overnight, a possible tornado damaged four businesses and at least one house, said Sheriff's Department Cpl. John Batey.

Parts of northern Uvalde and Medina counties got as much as 17 inches of rain between 10 p.m. Friday and 10 a.m. Saturday, said Pat McDonald, a National Weather Service forecaster.

Seco Creek overflowed, inundating the town of D'Hanis near San Antonio, said Medina County Sheriff Randy Brown. Many businesses were flooded with 3 to 4 feet of water.

Just a few years ago they were shipping hay from the Midwest down to Texas because of the terrible drought conditions there. I suspect people in the Lone Star State are no longer praying for rain.

Happy Blogaversary

The flagship of William Teach, The Pirate's Cove turns three today. Happy blogaversary, Captain! Or is that Commodore?

Penguins Invade Scotland

In a chilling development, there have been a spate of penguin sightings near the famed St Andrews golf course. The Animal Uprising™ is staking a claim to take over the crown jewel of golf.  

A POSSIBLE answer to the St Andrews penguin mystery landed in the Citizen office on Monday.
In recent weeks, dog walkers on the West Sands have been left rubbing their eyes in amazement at what appeared to be a lone penguin standing looking out to sea.

Most were able to get within touching distance of the bird which experts said was more likely to be a guillemot.

Neither the St Andrews Aquarium nor Edinburgh Zoo say they have lost any livestock. St Andrews Aquarium does not have any penguins and representatives from both tourist attractions reckoned the bird would be a guillemot.

This week, photographic evidence of what the bird looked like appeared to prove it was an adult guillemot.

They have the picture, but our highly-trained photo recognition experts do not see all that much resemblance between what they claim is a guillemot and the photos of those birds located over at Wikipedia. In fact, the bird looks just like a penguin. Obviously, the newspaper has gone over to the animals and is trying to suppress the truth. Note that the sentinel penguin was gazing out to sea - obviously watching for the rest of the invasion fleet. Just wait. In a very short time it will be impossible to get a tee time at the St. Andrews course - penguins are not known for being good sports.

The Silence Of The Ponies

Mark Steyn points out a few news items that have generated no real media coverage to speak of. Iran, having gotten away with it numerous times in the past, is holding hostages again. American hostages.

How do you feel about the American hostages in Iran?

No, not the guys back in the Seventies, the ones being held right now.

What? You haven't heard about them?

Odd that, isn't it? But they're there. For example, for two months now, Haleh Esfandiari has been detained in Evin prison in Tehran. Esfandiari is a U.S. citizen and had traveled to Iran to visit her sick mother. She is the director of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, which is the kind of gig that would impress your fellow guests at a Washington dinner party. Unfortunately, the mullahs say it's an obvious cover for a Bush spy.

Among the other Zionist-neocon agents currently held in Iranian jails are an American journalist, an American sociologist for a George Soros-funded leftie group, and an American peace activist from Irvine, Ali Shakeri, whose capture became known shortly after the United States and Iran held their first direct talks since the original hostage crisis.

Two months in an Iranian jail is no fun. Four years ago, a Montreal photo-journalist, Zahra Kazemi, was arrested by police in Tehran, taken to Evin prison, and wound up getting questioned to death. Upon her capture, the Canadian government had done as the State Department is apparently doing – kept things discreet, low-key, cards close to the chest, quiet word in the right ears. By the time Zahra Kazemi's son, frustrated by his government's ineffable equanimity, got the story out, it was too late for his mother.

Still, upon hearing of her death, then-Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham expressed his "sadness" and "regret," which are pretty strong words. But then, as Reuters put it, this sad regrettable incident had "marred previously harmonious relations between Iran and Canada." In his public pronouncements, Graham tended to give the impression that what he chiefly regretted and was sad about was that one of his compatriots had had the poor taste to get tortured and murdered onto the front pages of the newspapers.

With an apparently straight face, Graham passed on to reporters the official Iranian line that her death in jail was merely an "accident." The following year, Shahram Azam, a physician who'd examined Kazemi's body, fled Iran and said that she had broken fingers, a broken nose, a crushed toe, a skull fracture, severe abdominal bruising, and internal damage consistent with various forms of rape. Quite an accident.

Steyn points out that nobody appears to be paying any attention to this. Iran is counting on that response, of course. While the Congressional one-trick ponies posture and prance trying to figure out a politically viable method of surrender in Iraq, there is no chance that the US will actually do anything about Iran. Again, the Mullahs are counting on that. Once upon a time, American politicians, regardless of party, were concerned with hostile foreign governments who kidnapped and held Americans. That ended under the inept Carter administration, of course. The Mullahs learned that lesson well.

Democrat’s “Achievements”

Don Surber points to the recent poll numbers that show that the Democratic leadership in Congress has "achieved" one thing: They have actually made Bush's poll numbers look great. Voters are giving Congress the lowest marks ever for approval, a whopping 14%.

Under Democratic leadership, Congress has gone from the brink of the abyss and leaped. Whee!

Pollster John Zogby broke down the numbers.

"The Democratic Congress gets poor marks across the ideological spectrum — just 21 percent of liberals and 10 percent of the very liberal give it positive marks, while 14 percent of conservatives and 14 percent of the very conservative give it positive ratings," Zogby wrote.

"Among Democrats, just 19 percent give Congress positive marks, compared to 13 percent of Republicans and 8 percent of political independents.

"By way of comparison, the Republican Congress had a 23 percent positive job approval rating last October, just a week before voters tossed the GOP out of their leadership posts in both houses."

After six months, Democrats do have one bipartisan accomplishment: Everyone hates Congress.

Not so George Walker Bush. Among Republicans, 63 percent still think he is doing an outstanding job

Congress now has no base outside of its staff, the reporters who cover it and Mom, and even she is wavering.

I am not laughing. I am not gloating. I am troubled.

The leadership of Reid and Pelosi - along with all the old guard committee chairs they brought along - appear to have only one strategy at this point: hammer away a George Bush. Even though they are in power, they still have no other real agenda than that: bash Bush. And the voters can see that. In following the guidance of the far left fringe of the party and cooperating in creating a "toxic" political environment, they fail to see that they get caught in the same cloud of noxiousness. They are, whether they see this or not, setting up a classic "throw the bums out" scenario. And this time, there are more Democratic bums to toss than Republican. Surber is worried that faith in the government is eroding, he's right to do so. I suspect that voters will have a few surprises for politicians in 2008, though.

The voters voted for change in Washington in 2006, instead they got a couple of one-trick ponies in Reid and Pelosi. They may be counting on that one trick to carry them through 2008. That may not be a good bet. When people get tired of the act, they stop buying tickets to the show.

Today’s British Lunacy Report

The head of "cultural services" for the city council of Durham has reacted angrily to the proposed name of a new restaurant set to open in that city. Buddhist businessman Eddie Fung has invested around £1.3 million into the establishment, which will create some 60 jobs. But he wants to call the place "Fat Buddha". Enter Tracey Ingle, aforementioned cultural services honcho, who thinks the name is "provocative".

Mr Fung, 39, said: "I cannot believe that this woman should go to so much time and trouble to take issue over an inoffensive name like Fat Buddha.

"No Buddhist is going to be offended by this. The fat Buddha is a symbol of health and happiness. It is political correctness gone mad."

And a spokesman for the Buddhist Society said: "Buddhists regard the fat Buddha as lucky. To suggest this is offensive is to misunderstand the faith.

"Buddhists don't take offence at anything because to do so doesn't follow Buddhist teachings."

Mr Fung said that his company, Utopian Leisure, had received no complaints about the use of the name Fat Buddha at his first restaurant, which opened in Belfast earlier this year.

In a letter to Mr Fung, Miss Ingle wrote: "To use the name of a major religion's deity in your restaurant brand runs contrary to this city's reputation as a place of equality and respect for others' views and religious beliefs.

"The generic descriptive adjective of "fat" is not in itself a derogatory term when applied generally ... the name implies an Eastern offer <\[>sic] as it is associated with a religion that grew from Asian countries ... It does not, however, offer vegetarian cuisine solely nor does it refer to Buddhist belief systems. The name is provocative."

Oh boy. Talk about PC gone mad. This is actually a case of the political correctness not tolerating another culture but imposing its own cultural parochialism on others. The fat Buddha is also sometimes called the laughing Buddha. It is a very well known symbol of happiness, luck and generosity. Ok, it's well known everywhere but in the city council of Durham. (My son has a fat Buddha figurine on his desk. He asked us to buy it for him because it amused him.)