Pakistan: Obama’s Remarks “Ignorant”

Gee, this "muscular" foreign policy position of Barack Obama is sure paying off handsomely in improved foreign relations. Pakistan today reacted - with bitter anger - over Obama's threats.

Obama warned Wednesday that if he is elected president, he would order US forces to hit extremist targets on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan if embattled military ruler President Pervez Musharraf failed to act.

"Such statements are being made out of sheer ignorance," Pakistan's Minister of State for Information, Tariq Azeem, told AFP. "They are not fully apprised about the ground realities and not aware of the efforts by Pakistan."

Islamabad has bristled against a string of similar threats in recent weeks by the administration of US President George W. Bush, whose top counter-terror official in July refused to rule out US strikes in Pakistan.

Musharraf, struggling to contain a wave of Islamist violence unleashed by the army's bloody storming of the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad three weeks ago, himself firmly rejected any US action last week.

"We have said before that we will not allow anyone to infringe our sovereignty," Azeem said.

"If there is any actionable intelligence they should tell us and only our forces will take action on it and they are quite capable of it."

What a brilliant move to improve America's standing with the world, eh?

Oddity, Part The Third

Hmm. The first oddity I posted was about China and a cell phone provider sending war movie clips to subscriber's phones. The second was about a Chinese internet game that allowed people to "kill" corrupt officials in an virtual sense. Now comes a home-grown oddity: an internet game where players are asked to pretend they are illegal immigrants - and learn how to avoid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

MIAMI - A Japanese computer science student fails to take a full load of university classes and loses his student visa. A 10th-grade Indian girl is detained because of a high school essay she wrote on the Department of Homeland Security. These are two of the characters in "ICED!" — a new video game that invites players to step into the shoes of foreigners who run afoul of the U.S. immigration system.

It is part of a burgeoning genre of video games that examine major social and policy issues such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the situation in Darfur and the Electoral College.

"The game allows you to get into the body of a person, so you can experience what they are going through. There are very few opportunities to get that perspective," said Mallika Dutt, head of the nonprofit Breakthrough, which produced the game and uses new media to highlight social issues around the world.

"ICED!" — a play on the acronym for the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement office — is scheduled to be available for free download next month. It differs greatly from games like "Border Patrol," which popped up on the Internet last year and exhorted players to kill illegal immigrants as they entered the country.

"ICED!" seeks to show how immigration laws passed in 1996 expanded the number of crimes that can trigger deportation and limited immigrants' rights to appeal.

Players try to avoid deportation by keeping a low profile and performing community service. Shoplifting or jumping a subway turnstile loses points. Lose too many, and your character ends up in a federal detention facility.

The target audience: voting age teens.

Minneapolis Bridge Was Declared Structurally Deficient In 1990

And the state of Minnesota sprang into action and increased the frequency of inspections. But replace it they did not. Only relatively minor repairs were performed in the 17 years that the state has known the bridge had structural problems.

MINNEAPOLIS - Minnesota officials were warned as early as 1990 that the bridge that plummeted into the Mississippi River was "structurally deficient," yet they relied on a strategy of patchwork fixes and stepped-up inspections.

"We thought we had done all we could," state bridge engineer Dan Dorgan told reporters not far from the mangled remains of the span. "Obviously something went terribly wrong."

Questions about the cause of the collapse and whether it could have been prevented arose Thursday as authorities shifted from rescue efforts to a grim recovery, searching for bodies that may be hidden beneath the river's swirling currents.

The official death count from Wednesday's rush-hour collapse stood at four, with another 79 injuries. But police said the death count would surely grow because bodies had been spotted in the water and as many as 30 people were still reported missing.

In 1990, the federal government gave the I-35W bridge a rating of "structurally deficient," citing significant corrosion in its bearings. That made it one of 77,000 bridges in that category nationwide, 1,160 in Minnesota alone.

The designation means some portions of the bridge needed to be scheduled for repair or replacement, and it was on a schedule for inspection every two years.

During the 1990s, later inspections found fatigue cracks and corrosion in the steel around the bridge's joints. Those problems were repaired. Starting in 1993, the state said, the bridge was inspected annually instead of every other year.

A 2005 federal inspection also rated the bridge structurally deficient, giving it a 50 on scale of 100 for structural stability.

White House, press secretary Tony Snow said while the inspection didn't indicate the bridge was at risk of failing, "If an inspection report identifies deficiencies, the state is responsible for taking corrective actions."

There are already attempts to place blame for this on the Federal government, but it is the state's responsibility to maintain the bridges on the interstates. There does not appear to have been any attempt by the state to secure Federal money for a replacement or major overhaul of the bridge, either.

Tupelo Goes Bananas

Oliver "Capuchin" Monkey is still on the run in Tupelo, Mississippi. You may remember that Oliver picked the lock on his cell door and broke out of confinement. He has outsmarted his pursuers at every turn despite having been spotted on numerous occasions. Now, an anonymous local business man has upped the ante on Oliver offering a huge reward for his capture. Yes, it's all the bananas you can eat for whoever brings the escapee to justice.

A local businessman Thursday offered a reward for anyone in the country able to capture the white-face capuchin that escaped from a zoo here this week.

The reward includes a weekend stay at the Tupelo Hilton Garden Inn, a VIP tour of the Elvis Presley Birthplace and Museum, a VIP tour of the Tupelo Automobile Museum, and – of course – a case of bananas.

“I think we live in the best small town in America, and we ought to promote it every
chance we get,” said the donor, who wished to remain anonymous.

Oliver’s escape from the Tupelo Buffalo Park and Zoo on Tuesday sparked a citywide search for the sneaky primate and made international news headlines, appearing in newspapers and TV broadcasts as far away as South Africa and Taiwan.

It also appeared Wednesday on the David Letterman Show and even inspired the talk-show comedian’s Top 10 List that night.

It is quite obvious that Oliver has figured out how to hide in plain sight in Tupelo. Given that Tupelo is the birthplace of Elvis Presley and the site of an annual Elvis festival, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard believe we have solved the mystery! Where's our bananas?

(Side Note: That is one creepy photoshop…..)

Oddity, Redux

Yesterday I noted that a cell phone service provider in China has started a service to allow subscribers to download pictures of military weapons and war movie clips to their cell phones. Today come this little item. It seems that there is a new smash hit internet game in China. Players get to torture and kill corrupt public officials, at least virtually.

"Incorruptible Fighter", developed by the government of east China's Zhejiang province, was launched just over a week ago and is already so popular that it is being redesigned to accommodate more players, the China Daily said.

"I feel a great sense of achievement when I punish lots of evil officials," one gamer surnamed Sun was quoted as saying.

The game, which lets players get ahead by killing officials by means of "weapons, magic or torture," has been downloaded more than 100,000 times, the Southern Metropolitan Daily said.

The different game scenarios are based on well-known incidents taken from Chinese history, but the parallels in modern China of people struggling against seemingly insurmountable corruption are clear.

In order to advance to a new level, the player must enter into an "Anti-Corruption College" to be lectured in more detail about ancient cases, the Southeast Business newspaper said.

Hmmm. What does this all mean? I have no idea. It seems rather odd, though.

Cracks, Part Four

The Hill is reporting that the cracks in the Democratic position on the Iraq war have reached a crisis point. The hard left is in shock after Nancy Pelosi suddenly reversed herself and will allow a floor vote on a bill they thought had been killed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reversed herself on Iraq strategy Wednesday, revealing a fight within the Democratic Caucus over how much Democrats should compromise to gain agreement with Republicans on the unpopular war.

Progressive Caucus leaders were fuming after they walked into a meeting with Pelosi to find out that she had decided to allow a vote Thursday on an Iraq bill they consider too mild.

Sponsored by Reps. Neil Abercrombie (D-Hawaii) and John Tanner (D-Tenn.), the bill would order President Bush to deliver within two months a plan on how to redeploy troops. It will be on the suspension calendar, meaning there will be no amendments, but it needs a two-thirds majority to pass.

That bill got 24 Republican votes in the Armed Services Committee last week, but it may lose votes from liberal Democrats who have pledged not to support Iraq redeployment measures that don’t include a “date certain.”

“It takes us backwards,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.), an Out of Iraq caucus leader. “If Democrats want to give Republicans votes to go home with when they’ve done nothing to redeploy our troops, that’s bad.”

Progressive leaders feel that such measures give cover to Republicans to go home for the August break and tell constituents they have voted for redeployment, without voting on strict measures that would order Bush to bring the troops home.

The cracks are now so wide you could drive a truck through them. The devastatingly bad poll results for Congress cut both ways, and the pols know it. House Dems from closely divided districts run a real chance of destroying their hopes for reelection by following the hard left on this. They know it, that's why things are beginning to shatter.

Finally! We’ll Get Some Action Now!

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have struggled for a long time to report the news of the Animal Uprising™. Despite some success in raising awareness of the dangers, far too many people ignore us. Or report us. But that will change now. This is serious. The Animal Uprising™ has badly overreached. As soon as news of this gets around most women, not a few men and virtually every child on the planet will turn on the animal overlords once and for all.

The squirrels are stealing the chocolate!

A squirrel with a sweet tooth heads to a Finnish grocery shop at least twice a day to steal "Kinder Surprise" chocolate-shelled candy eggs.

"I named it the Kinder-squirrel, after the treats. It always goes after them, other sweets do not seem to interest it as much," the manager of the store in Jyvaskyla, central Finland, said.

The confectionary, which is intended for children, has a toy inside.

"It removes the foil carefully, eats the chocolate and leaves the store with the toy," Irene Lindroos said.

Unfortunately, the bushy-tailed thief does not clean up after itself, but leaves the wrappers behind, she added.

Sure, this report plays it up as if it were cute. But remember, squirrels share a group mind. If one squirrel has a sweet tooth, they all do. And there are bazillions of them. When the supply of chocolate dries up for humans, all hell is going to break loose.

Ghoul Deer Spotted In Elko

The Elko, Nevada, Daily Free Press is reporting that a ghoul deer has been spotted in a cemetery. They misidentify it as a 'mule' deer, but the difference should be obvious.

A 4-by-2 mule deer buck drew numerous onlookers Tuesday morning as it was spotted lounging in the shade in the cemetery on Cedar Street. While does, or perhaps the same doe, have been spotted in the tree streets this summer, this is the first time this year a buck of any size has been reported in town.

Nevada Department of Wildlife Conservation Educator Joe Doucette said it’s likely the buck came into town for relief from the high temperatures and dry conditions outside of town.

Though it’s true a significant portion of the area habitat that helps support the deer population has been lost due to wildfires, Doucette said this deer’s venture into town likely wasn’t one of necessity. Deer do, however, browse on succulent forbs, such as dandelions, pansies and similar leafy flowering plants.

Of course ghoul deer graze on human flesh, not flowers. But this is the first reported sighting of a ghoul deer in Nevada. It's fairly unusual, ghoul goats are generally more common.

Endeavour Leak Located, To Be Repaired

NASA officials have located the source for a leak in the crew cabin of space shuttle Endeavour and have ordered a repair. The replacement of a faulty relief valve will not impact the shuttle launch date.

Shuttle workers had been tracing the elusive leak since the weekend as they readied Endeavour for its planned Aug. 7 launch from Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

"The problem has been traced to one of two positive pressure relief valves which assure that the crew cabin does not become over-pressurized," said George Diller, a NASA spokesperson at KSC, in a status update.

Engineers will swap out the faulty valve with a working one taken from Endeavour's sister ship Atlantis during a fix that is expected to be complete by Thursday.

"There is no impact to the space shuttle's Aug. 7 launch date," Diller said of the repair.

Mission managers also opted not to replace thermostats in one of Endeavour's auxiliary power units found to be returning off-nominal signals, NASA officials said. The glitch is not violating operational specifications and is understood by engineers, they added.

At least it turned out to be relatively simple. (I know from personal experience what a pain relief valves can be. I can't even count the number of times plants I worked at had to deal with leaking reliefs.)

Spitzer Under Attack

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is acting guilty says Michael Goodwin - who is not letting Spitzer off the hook for the attempted political destruction of the NY state Senate majority leader.

With Spitzer continuing to act as if he has something to hide, let's assume he does.

In that case, Spitzer must keep doing what he's doing - following a rope-a-dope strategy of alternately apologizing and being defiant and hope that public interest fades. He should keep complaining about partisan attacks and demand Albany get back to what he called "the needs of New Yorkers."

Of course, Spitzer also must succeed in his quest to handpick the inquisitors for the next investigation. If he's guilty, the last thing he wants is to face an independent, professional prosecutor under oath.

Koch, who supports Spitzer, told me he can forgive almost anything "except perjury."

Spitzer has shown evidence of guilt from the beginning on the key issue of whether his office cooperated with investigators who exposed the plot against Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno. The governor's repeated claim that he cooperated fully with Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and his own inspector general was true only in Spitzerland. In the real world, his office stopped two main players from being questioned and designated two others as "special counsels" for reasons that aren't clear. His office denies that the aim was to shield the two from investigators, but it hasn't offered a good alternative explanation.

In addition, a probe by Inspector General Kristine Hamann, whom Spitzer appointed, appears to have been a sham. A spokesman for Hamann conceded the office didn't even attempt to question the two key aides Spitzer's office blocked from talking to Cuomo's investigators. Yet the spokesman said Hamann agreed with the Cuomo report that sanctions against the two were "appropriate."

That's bizarre - the inspector general doesn't try to talk to the people it decides are guilty of misconduct. Nor did Hamann prepare a report on her findings.

Meanwhile, The intended victim of the political dirty tricks that originated in Spitzer's offices, Joe Bruno, is going on the offensive himself. In an op-ed in the Opinion Journal, Bruno is demanding that Spitzer come clean on the entire mess. One senses that Bruno has not really forgiven Spitzer despite the latter's public apology.

The abuse of power now being alleged is a very serious matter that has placed a cloud over state government. It is especially damaging because the scandal involves misusing state troopers and alleged misconduct by the governor's top aides, including the state assistant secretary for Homeland Security. New Yorkers have made it clear in several polls that they believe the governor knew about the smear campaign and should publicly testify about what he knew and when he knew it.

It is troubling that a governor who campaigned on ethics, openness and accountability, is now trying to sweep the "Troopergate" matter under the rug. But it is not surprising. This is not an isolated incident. It is just the most serious example of a pattern of behavior that raises very serious questions about the governor's judgment, temperament and ability to govern New York State.

When Mr. Spitzer took office earlier this year, the Republican Senate majority–and I, as majority leader–pledged to work with him on critical issues such as strengthening our economy, creating jobs, keeping communities safe and cutting taxes. But we quickly found that we did not have a willing partner. We found a man who did not respect opposing viewpoints and who verbally threatened those who disagreed with him.

In his public statements and behind the scenes, the governor has refused to work in a bipartisan manner. Instead, he has politicized his office like no other governor in history. Rather than negotiating and compromising with people who challenged him, Mr. Spitzer tried to eliminate them. That is dangerous for democracy.

One also can sense that Bruno senses an opening to slam the dictatorial Spitzer and force some changes in the governor's behavior. This is a widening attack now and Spitzer may well be in real political trouble. It is unlikely that Bruno would have launched this broadside if he did not think it would work.

Tough Talking Obama: Reactions

The Chicago Sun Times reports that other Democratic hopefuls for the nomination have come out swinging at Barack Obama's threat to carry out unilateral military strikes against Pakistan if he felt like it needed to be done.

Dodd and Biden overtly criticized Obama as the primary heats up.

"It is dangerous and irresponsible to leave even the impression the United States would needlessly and publicly provoke a nuclear power," Dodd said.

"We find it a little disingenuous that Sen. Obama is hailing this as a new bold initiative," said Biden's campaign manager, Luis Navarro.

The Bush administration is concerned about destabilizing the Musharraf regime. "We think that our approach to Pakistan is one that not only respects the sovereignty of Pakistan as a sovereign government, but is also designed to work in a way where we are working in cooperation with the local government," said White House spokesman Tony Snow, reacting to Obama's speech.

Meanwhile, over at the New York Post, Peter Brooks points out that Obama's "bold, new initiative" is precisely what George W. Bush has been saying all along - only without any respect for the sovereignty of other nations. Ones that happen to have nuclear weapons.

First, there was little new in Obama's proposition for fighting al Qaeda. In fact, he might be alarmed to learn that he's basically taken a long-standing page from the Bush administration's playbook in the War on Terror.

President Bush has already made it clear on numerous occasions that he'd do what whatever was necessary to kill or capture al Qaeda operatives - especially the likes of Osama bin Laden - if we had actionable intelligence to do so.

But an attack on Pakistan's terrority that isn't unauthorized by that nation's government - which is what Obama seemed to be suggesting - is a pretty risky proposition, especially if it involved a large number of U.S. troops pouring over the Afghan border into Pakistan.

Taking this sort of large-scale action - or any other unilateral action - without prior consultation with Islamabad could easily lead to the downfall of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf's government.

Highly amusing. I suspect Obama will begin fading in the polls now. He's managed to do the exact opposite of what the vociferous left has demanded while not really impressing anyone in the middle.

Minneapolis Brodge Collapse Update

The Star Tribune is now reporting that nine people are confirmed to have died in the tragedy and that 20 more are missing. About 60 people are injured. Divers had to stop working for several hours during the night but have resumed with the sunrise.

Emergency crews and divers have resumed their recovery and clean up efforts at the scene of the Interstate 35W bridge that collapsed during rush hour Wednesday evening.

Mayor R.T. Rybak said this morning that recovery continued through the night, but that diving was stopped for several hours because of dangerous conditions for divers who were working in dark, amid fallen concrete and other debris.

Diving has resumed, he said.

As the sun rose this morning at least two patrol boats were visible on the river south and east of the lock and dam and just uptream from the collapsed bridge.

Many rescuers who'd been at scene as late as 2 a.m. were expected back at 6 a.m. for an operations briefing. Then, they were going to go back onto the water.

An hour before sunrise, nearly a dozen giant lights mounted on the Cedar Avenue and surviving parts of I-35W bridge illuminated river surface.

Ed Morrisey reports that another newspaper is reporting that there may have been warning signs that the bridge had structural problems.

Normally, in the wake of a catastrophe, the details become clear only slowly and fitfully. Last night we heard that the 35W bridge had passed all of its inspections and that the collapse completely surprised everyone. Today, the Pioneer Press reports that inspectors had warned of a problem with this particular bridge, although the state overall had done an excellent job in bridge maintenance:

Bridge inspectors had noted structural problems over the years in the Interstate 35W bridge over the Mississippi River that collapsed Wednesday evening, but it was unclear whether obvious warning signs had been ignored. …

In 2005, inspectors from the Minnesota Department of Transportation deemed the bridge "structurally deficient," in data submitted to the Federal Highway Administration's National Bridge Inventory.

The bridge, Ed Notes, had a 500-foot clear span with no supports. I'm not a civil engineer, but a 500 foot span seems rather long. (Here's a site with a simple explanation of various bridge types for anyone interested. There is bridge design software for the West Point Bridge Design contest that can be downloaded and installed available here.)