Aberration

I have not hit this topic until now (sometimes it pays to wait a bit). Brian De Palma, who hasn't exactly made a non-stop career of mega-hits, is now getting a lot of press for his anti-Iraq-war movie Redacted. (De Palma has made some real big hits, but a lot of very forgettable movies). He has openly said that his movie is meant to turn the American public against the war. Well, it turns out that there is another player in getting De Palma's latest and greatest flick to the silver screen.

Mark Cuban.

Billionaire Mark Cuban has decided to put all of his weight behind a campaign to smear US troops in Iraq as “monsters’. Cuban has decided that De Palma’s film “Redacted” must be seen as the cornerstone of his and De Palma’s self-declared anti-victory campaign against America and her troops fighing in Iraq. Cuban’s company Magnolia Pictures will be bringing this propganda campaign to a theater near you this winter. According to a source close to Cuban, the decision for Magnolia to develop, finance and distribute the film was personally made by Çuban. Cuban has a full producer credit on the film, and DePalma shot it on HiDef video at Cuban’s request, in order for it to qualify as fodder for Cuban’s hi-def cable channel. So far neither he or DePalma have explained how they can be “bringing the truth of the Iraq war to the American people”, as Louie DePalma has said, when neither of them have ever been to Iraq, filmed any of “Redacted” in Iraq, or spent one minute with any soldier in Iraq. Clearly they are only bringing you their imagined propagandists’ reality of Iraq. Both had the opportunity to go, both declined. They have chosen the coward’s path in a quest for legitimacy as spokesmen for the Iraq war, and as such both have failed in that quest. Indeed, they are left standing as laughingstocks. Their reach has exceeded their grasp. Cuban is a jet-set, armchair “Iraq Truther” who made sure not to have his private jet stop anywhere near Iraq. But he and DePalma are more than anxious to bring you the “reality of the Iraq war”.

The hideous event that De Palma has made into a film happened. (Though I rather doubt De Palma cares whether he got it right on film). The people involved are serving long, long sentences in prison as a result. Contrast that single incident with this systematic one. Compare the punishment – swift after the charges were brought – to this. Both Cuban and De Palma need to take a step back and think about what they are doing. They are purposely painting the troops in the worst possible light – for political purposes. That is the very definition of propaganda and a serious loss of perspective.

(H/T Memeorandum)

Where There Is An American, There Is America

Imagine, for just one moment the screeching, seething volume of pure, unadulterated vitriol that would be directed at George W. Bush if he said anything even resembling that post title. The frothing rage would spew from your computer monitor in physical waves. You would get seriously wet in the outpouring of righteous rage. But no worries, Bush did not – and would not – say any such imperialistic rhetoric.

But the president of Mexico would.

From Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s first State of the Nation speech delivered today:

President Felipe Calderon blasted U.S. immigration policies on Sunday and promised to fight harder to protect the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., saying “Mexico does not end at its borders.” The criticism earned Calderon a standing ovation during his first state-of-the nation address.

There’s more:

“We strongly protest the unilateral measures taken by the U.S. Congress and government that have only persecuted and exacerbated the mistreatment of Mexican undocumented workers,” he said. “The insensitivity toward those who support the U.S. economy and society has only served as an impetus to reinforce the battle … for their rights.”

He also reached out to the millions of Mexicans living in the United States, many illegally, saying: “Where there is a Mexican, there is Mexico.”

For whatever it is worth (not much) I supported Calderon when a loser leftist, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) was attempting to usurp the presidency of Mexico. But I had no idea at the time that Calderon was a closet imperialist of the first order. I have nothing but respect for every legal immigrant to this country. But I am not about to surrender the sovereignty of this country to a tin-pot tyrant with designs on my home. Your country's border, Mr. Calderon, ends at the Rio Grande (or Río Bravo del Norte, as you might call it) – as does your hyperventilating pontification. But you're more than welcome to try to enforce your territorial ambitions.

(Here's a hint, Mr. Calderon. You just lost a lot of people in this country who might have been wavering your way with that one.)

UPDATE: Others: Irish Spy, Hot Air, Flopping Aces, Cop The Truth,

About That Doubling Down

Here's a bit of confirmation that doubling down on America is not a bad idea at all. We lead the world – by a lot – in productivity. So says the much-vaunted-by-the-left United Nations.

GENEVA – American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.

They also get more done per hour than everyone but the Norwegians, according to a U.N. report released Monday, which said the United States "leads the world in labor productivity."

The average U.S. worker produces $63,885 of wealth per year, more than their counterparts in all other countries, the International Labor Organization said in its report. Ireland comes in second at $55,986, followed by Luxembourg at $55,641, Belgium at $55,235 and France at $54,609.

The productivity figure is found by dividing the country's gross domestic product by the number of people employed. The U.N. report is based on 2006 figures for many countries, or the most recent available.

Only part of the U.S. productivity growth, which has outpaced that of many other developed economies, can be explained by the longer hours Americans are putting in, the ILO said.

The U.S., according to the report, also beats all 27 nations in the European Union, Japan and Switzerland in the amount of wealth created per hour of work — a second key measure of productivity.

Norway, which is not an EU member, generates the most output per working hour, $37.99, a figure inflated by the country's billions of dollars in oil exports and high prices for goods at home. The U.S. is second at $35.63, about a half dollar ahead of third-place France.

The figures for Norway are skewed, as the report admits, by the gas and oil revenue of their offshore drilling operations. So, still think everything is gloomy in the US? Really?

Oh. My. God. This Is Awful!

Screeches the Associated Press. This is unheard of. This is horrible. This is irresponsible.

This is thinly (very thinly) disguised class warfare – and raging hypocrisy.

Conn. home 20-times larger than average

WEST HARTFORD, Conn. – The enormity of the house Arnold Chase is building on Avon Mountain isn't fully apparent from the outside, where only 17,000 square feet of it lies in plain view.

It's the two-level, 33,500-square-foot basement complex, complete with a 103-seat movie theater, ticket booth, concession stand, game room and music annex, that will make it New England's largest occupied single-family home.

At nearly 50,900 square feet, the Chase home will be slightly larger than billionaire Bill Gates' home in Washington, about 4,000 square feet smaller than the White House and 20 times larger than the average-size home in America.

The average U.S. home measures about 2,500 square feet — up from 1,995 square feet in 1988 — according to the National Association of Home Builders. But while houses are getting bigger, rarely are they built as big as the new Chase house.

"What you're talking about is mega homes," said Gopal Ahluwalia, the home builders association's vice president for research. "There are few homes larger than 50,000 square feet."

The brick and stucco colonial can be seen easily from the road. But the Hartford-based businessman, who plans to vacate a comparatively tiny 8,900-square-foot home when he moves, doesn't want too many people to know about it. He refused an interview and had a freelance photographer seeking permission to photograph the house for The Associated Press cited for trespassing.

We have hyperventilating from the left!

"Do you actually need to have that amount of space to live a good life?" said Susan A. Eisenhandler, a sociology professor at the University of Connecticut. "There are homeless people. There are impoverished people. There are serious social concerns, and we're not addressing that."

When the scandalized moralists from the AP (and the good professor) denounce the enormous – and growing – energy consumption of the Gorezilla, we may have something to talk about. For now, leave the man and his family alone. You have no – zero – right to intrude on his decisions. You really have none when you are silent about one of the biggest hypocrites pontificating today. Al Gore is devouring 20 times the national average of energy – and the AP is picking on a private citizen.

I’ll Have The El Gato Supremo

Sent to the Crabitat by one of our tireless informants, comes this BBC article about a new taste treat developed in the Australian outback. That continent is plagued, among other things, with feral cats. These are formerly domesticated common house cats who have reverted to their wild ways and eat, well, pretty much anything that does not eat them first. The problem is, what do you do with a gazillion wild cats? The ever-ingenious Aussies have come up with a solution:

Cat casserole.

The woman behind the controversial cat stew recipe has said Australians could do their bit to help the environment by tucking into more feral pests, including pigeons and camels.

But it was a recipe for feline casserole that impressed some of the judges at an outback food competition in Alice Springs.

Preparing this unusual stew seems simple enough.

The meat should be diced and fried until it is brown. Then lemon grass is to be added along with salt and pepper and three cups of quandong, which is a sweet desert fruit.

It is recommended that the dish be left to simmer for five hours before being garnished with bush plums and mistletoe berries.

Marinated moggie was not to everyone's taste. One of the competition judges found the meat impossibly tough and had to politely excuse herself and spit it out in a backroom.

Wild cats are considered good eating by some Aborigines, who roast the animals on an open fire.

This reminds us of that old French-Canadian Christmas carol that starts out: "Chipmunks roasting on an open fire……." but we digress. Now rumors about the use of the occasional stray feline in the Moo Goo Gai Pan or the tacos have long abounded here in the states. But we did not know of any cat casserole recipes. And we're somewhat sorry to have heard about this one.

One Step Up, Two Steps Back

North Korea has agreed to full disclosure of all of its nuclear programs and an end to them all by the close of this year.

"One thing that we agreed on is that the DPRK (North Korea) will provide a full declaration of all of their nuclear programmes and will disable their nuclear programs by the end of this year, 2007," Christopher Hill told journalists after two days of talks in Geneva.

North Korea has already shut down a key nuclear reactor at Yongbyon under an agreement reached on February 13.

Under the deal, North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear programme in return for aid and security and diplomatic guarantees, notably normalising ties with the United States.

The US suspects the North, which conducted its first atomic weapons test in October, of running a secretive highly enriched uranium programme in addition to the programmes it has already admitted to.

When asked whether the declaration would have to include the suspension of all uranium activities to be satisfactory to Washington, Hill replied: "Full means full."

Three words, borrowed from a great American: Trust but verify. One hopes the government is working on that aspect as well. So that is today's good news in the nuclear area. The bad news is from Iran. Mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is rattling his sabre with all his might.

TEHRAN (AFP) – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday Iran had achieved a key target in its atomic drive by operating more than 3,000 uranium-enriching centrifuges in defiance of world powers.

His boast came as Iran answers questions over its nuclear programme to the UN atomic agency under a plan the watchdog's chief Mohamed ElBaradei warned could be a "last chance" for the Islamic republic.

"They (world powers) thought that by issuing any resolution Iran would back down," Ahmadinejad told Islamist students, referring to the two previous sanctions resolutions imposed against Tehran by the UN Security Council.

"But after each resolution the Iranian nation took another step along the path of nuclear development," he said, according to the website of state broadcasting.

"Now it has put into operation more than 3,000 centrifuges and every week we install a new series" of centrifuges, he said.

The installation of 3,000 centrifuges has always been earmarked by Iran as the key medium-term goal of its nuclear programme, a milestone it had originally hoped to reach by March.

Gas is fed into the centrifuges to produced enriched uranium, which can be used to make nuclear power and, in highly enriched form, the fissile core of a nuclear bomb.

However a UN atomic energy agency report obtained by AFP last week said that Iran was still well short of 3,000 centrifuges.

AFP is still cheerily providing cover for the rogue state, but it is a singularly bad idea to discount what Ahmadinejad is boasting about. Nicolas Sarkozy sees the real dangers here and has spoken openly about them. A nuclear armed Iran is a menace to the entire region. Period. The idiots trying to water down sanctions on Iran are making a general war much more likely. The failure to present a unified front against this man and the mullahs is dragging the world to the brink.

Camouflaged California Caiman Confounded

A four-foot long caiman, cleverly disguised as a drainage ditch, had his nefarious plans to ambush children upset by a sharp-eyed school employee.

A school district employee found a 4-foot-long reptile in a flood control ditch near Grimmer Boulevard and Carol Avenue in Fremont on Monday afternoon.

The area is close to Irvington High School, and a preschool is also in the area.

Animal control officers responded to the scene and used a pole normally used to catch dogs to lasso the creature.

It was determined to be a caiman, which is a crocodilian reptile similar to an alligator.

Officers put the creature in a dog cage and took it to the Tri-City Animal Shelter on Stevenson Boulevard.

Obviously, the caiman was intent on catching some nice, fresh children (and high school age kids are very fresh these days). The Animal Uprising™ is ratcheting up the activities of the reptile legions. That isn't a good sign. Given the reptile's skill at disguising themselves as various odd things – like doormats and now ditches – you never know what innocent-looking object might be about to dine on you. We recommend doing what were here at Blue Crab Boulevard do. Always carry a nine-iron and shank any suspicious object. Or just do it at random. That keeps them guessing.

Bear Hijacks Truck

This is bad news. A woman in Maine has had her truck hijacked by a bear.

PARIS – A bear cub, estimated to be about 2 years old, has apparently found a new home in the back of a local woman's truck.

Cindy Thibodeau, owner of klips hair salon in Norway, said paw marks found all over the interior of her 2001 Sport Trac Explorer, early Friday morning have been identified by a game warden as bear tracks.

"He's done this before," said Thibodeau of the cub's increasingly brazen behavior that has resulted in the animal climbing into the open back of the Explorer and curling up and sleeping before climbing out early in the morning before being seen.

Thibodeau, who lives on Stoney Brook off Buckfield Road with two small dogs, two cats and her two little boys, said Friday morning that she realized she had a potentially serious problem on her hands once she discovered a bear was sleeping only 20 feet away from the door of her house. After notifying the town, Game Warden Tony Gray was sent to the house to take a look.

So far, the bear hasn't taken the truck for a joyride, but it is only a matter of time. Once he gets his paws on the keys, all hell is going to bust loose. But the advice from the Game Warden is a bit, er, odd.

"He advised her to do stuff to make the bear uncomfortable in the truck, like putting mothballs or a cup of ammonia in the bed," warden service spokesman Mark Latti said by phone early Friday evening in Brunswick.

"Also, if she does hear the bear tonight, to turn on her house lights and make a lot of noise and spray it with something. Usually, if you make a lot of noise, that will make a bear uncomfortable. The first step with any nuisance animal is to try and scare it away. That's the easiest and least expensive solution and, usually the most effective," Latti added.

That works sometimes, but it also backfires on occasion. Exactly what is the Maine Game Warden Service being paid to do? Other than give interviews to newspapers? One presumes a paid professional game warden would be better suited to dealing with a bear hijacking a vehicle than a woman living alone with two children.

Where Does She Put It?

I posted something about Sonya Thomas once before (expired link, though). She stands 5 foot 5 inches tall, weighs 105 pounds and goes by the professional name of The Black Widow. And she can eat.

The 105-pound competitive eater who goes by "The Black Widow" bested a dozen beefy rivals Saturday night, scarfing 173 wings in 12 minutes to win the wing-eating contest at the National Buffalo Wing Festival.

"That's 5.17 pounds of wings," said Brian Kahle, spokesman for the annual Labor Day weekend event in the city where Buffalo wings were born.

Thomas, 40, of Alexandria, Va., also held the festival's previous record of 161 wings in 12 minutes, set in 2004.

"She's the crowd favorite," Kahle said. "It was 12 huge guys and her."

She essentially ate the equivalent of 1/20th of her weight in 12 minutes. Good lord. Here's her newly updated website – complete with animated Sonya. Eating, of course.

So, How Do You Manage To Walk Around…….

….With your underwear tied in that many knots? There is another flurry of howling about an imminent attack on Iran by the US, coming from the usual suspects on the left. But this one is at best, criminal at worst raging fraud. Mac's Mind has the details (I don't generally link to Kos for any reason.)

I passed this post on to the ONI AG – Office of Naval Intelligence AG to have a look-see and see if they can find this young lady – if she exists and have a chat. An active duty officer on a ship preparing for operations giving out the op plans to said operation is called – treason.

It is either another Jessie MacBeth moment, or someone is going to be breaking rocks for a long time. That kind of a breach of operational security – especially for political purposes – is a very, very serious offense.

Meanwhile, more reports that the Pentagon is making plans for an attack are surfacing. So what? The Pentagon has in its files attack plans for Andorra, I'd be willing to bet. That is what military planners do: plan. For everything they can think of. Then the plan usually gets tossed in the first 20 minutes or so after it is launched.

UPDATE: Just caught this giveaway on a second read through the stuff Mac quoted:

Last night in the galley, an ensign asked what right do we have to tell a sovereign nation that they can’t build a nuke. I mean the table got EF Hutton quiet.

Officers eat in a wardroom – either the "clean-shirt" wardroom or the "dirty-shirt" wardroom on a carrier. But a wardroom.  

UPDATE: Lex – who knows what he is talking about – does not think the so-called correspondent does at all. Period. Lex systematically tears apart a lot of the babble (and catches the "galley" thing as well.) He's hoisting the flag on this fabulism. (I call it throwing the flag around here, but it references the same all-natural beef byproduct that is produced in copious quantities anywhere cows are kept. I'm sure you can figure that out.) We got another Scott Thomas MacBeth on our hands here. But about 1,200 or so commenters so far seem to be working themselves into a frothing rage over these lies.

UPDATE: Absolutely classic comment (over 1,300 now over in the fever swamps):

whether this diary is fiction is irrelevant
 
all signs point to BushCo stirring up war with Iran.

we need to make the American people pay attention to this fact before they wake up and find themselves embroiled in another senseless war started without their consent.

Politics is like driving. To go backward, put it in R. To go forward, put it in D.
IMPEACH CHENEY FIRST.

Screw the truth, full speed ahead.

UPDATE: Frankly, even Kos himself (Yeah, I actually linked Kos – weird, isn't it?) is more than a bit put out at the BS being spread through his site. In fact, he all but calls "Maccabee" a liar, a fool or both. But Kos (both the site and the man behind it)  took a serious hit here on credibility. This is probably the fastest internet takedown of a bogus bit of trutherism ever. And a LOT of Kos's best buds were cheerfully – and completely – onboard the steaming heap of fabulist crap Maccabee deposited. (Want to bet that this is Maccabee's last post on Kos?)

UPDATE: And BINGO! The post has been disappeared from Daily Kos and just can't be found anymore. Isn't that special? Isn't that typical? They got caught out – bigtime – on this piece of crap and have thrown it (and "Maccabee", I'll bet) down the old memory hole to avoid being seen for what they are. Here's the list from Memeorandum of folks who commented on the story, minus those I have already linked:

Little Green Footballs, QandO, ParaPundit, Wake up America, DownWithTyranny!, Booman Tribune, Liberty Street, The Van Der Galiën Gazette, Stop The ACLU, Israel Matzav,

You can sift out the extremely gullible on your own. Because there are several in the above list who swallowed the whole enchilada, hook, line and sinker without any question at all.

Doubling Down On America

A rather interesting opinion piece by Joel Achenbach in today's Washington Post is worth a read. It discusses a pretty common doom-and-gloom theme that a lot of people are promoting these days: America is a declining power. Well, maybe, Achenbach says, but when things look the worst is the best time to get great odds from a bookie. He advises doubling down on America. It is an interesting take.

Declinism crosses partisan lines. You can find it in fat books, dense journal articles and angry hip-hop songs. Hollywood takes it as a given. We're past our prime, suffering from incompetent leaders, an overextended military and an incurious, flabby citizenry.

All this strikes me as the cue to place a bet on America. Don't despair: double down.

Here's what I'd tell my children if they were to ponder whether this country will remain the most powerful on the planet: Think like a bookie. When things look most dire is when you get the best odds. Watch that Vegas line. Right now, the smart move is to take the United States and the points.

This doesn't mean that our national problems and deep-seated flaws will magically be cured. Nor should we arrogate to ourselves a special status in the eyes of Providence; putting "In God We Trust" on our coins does not guarantee that the reverse will also be true. Any number of wild cards could come into play (if computers become Terminators and try to wipe us out, all bets are off). If the past is a foreign country, as someone once said, then the future is another planet entirely. So any predictions herein are made with the proviso that I am prepared to retract them tomorrow.

What his argument boils down to is that many of the folks making gloomy predictions are doing so by only looking at America itself. (This is the cultural chauvinism I have pointed out many times.) But America does not exist in a vacuum and we do not control what other countries do or how they will react to various problems or opportunities.

It's probably adaptive to plan for the worst. Humans evolved in places where the most complacent and serene members of the tribe quickly became lion chow. But many Americans may simply not see clearly the extent of our current geopolitical power. It's a side effect of our solipsism. We're not terribly engaged with the rest of the world, don't tend to speak a second or third language and famously can't find Iraq on a map.

Achenbach points out a few things that will very likely have impact on world politics and the global economy that America is completely powerless to change at all:

China's rivers are sewers. Environmental problems make the Chinese economic boom unsustainable. That's the recent assessment of China's deputy minister for the environment in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel: "This miracle will end soon because the environment can no longer keep pace. Acid rain is falling on one third of the Chinese territory, half of the water in our seven largest rivers is completely useless, while one fourth of our citizens does not have access to clean drinking water."

Moreover, China will be the first country to get old before it gets rich. China's one-child policy, so rigidly enforced in the 1980s and 1990s, will haunt the country as it finds itself without enough workers to support a geriatric population.

Actual events can have a funny way of negating the best predictions. So is Achenbach any better at predicting outcomes? No, but he also admits that up front. Sure there are problems in this country. It may be that it is time for some big ideas to address them. Maybe it is time to double down.

No Argument

Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason Magazine, reviews a new book by Matt Bai in todays New York Times. Bai covers national politics for the The New York Times Magazine, so naturally, his book, The Argument, is about politics. Specifically, it is about the lack of ideas that defines the Democratic party today. It is not a flattering book and their will be a lot of Democratic "players" who will not be sending Bai any Christmas cards anytime soon.

With the possible exception of the Republicans, is there a major political party more stupefyingly brain-dead than the Democrats? That’s the ultimate takeaway from “The Argument,” Matt Bai’s sharply written, exhaustively reported and thoroughly depressing account of “billionaires, bloggers, and the battle to remake Democratic politics” along unabashedly “progressive” (read: New Deal and Great Society) lines. Well-financed and influential groups ranging from the Democracy Alliance to the New Democrat Network to MoveOn.org may be taking over the Democratic Party, he says, but they are not doing the heavy thinking that will fundamentally transform politics — unlike the free-market, small-government groups formed in the wake of Barry Goldwater’s historic loss in the 1964 presidential race…….

…….In detailing the machinations of superrich Democratic activists like George Soros, who blew through close to $30 million of his wealth in an unsuccessful attempt to unelect George W. Bush in 2004, and barricade-bashing cyberpunks like Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, founder of the popular Daily Kos Web site, whose participant-readers attack all things Republican with the same fervor they showed when championing the already forgotten Ned Lamont in his unsuccessful attempt to unseat Senator Joseph Lieberman in 2006, Bai reluctantly and repeatedly owns up to a hard truth: “There’s not much reason to think that the Democratic Party has suddenly overcome its confusion about the passing of the industrial economy and the cold war, events that left the party, over the last few decades, groping for some new philosophical framework.”

Bai's book, and Gillespie's review, seems especially hard on Markos Moulitsas Zúniga and his book-writing partner, Jerome "Plea Bargain" Armstrong.

Moulitsas, the Prince Hal of the left-liberal blogosphere, comes off as an intellectual lightweight, boasting to Bai that his next book will be called “The Libertarian Democrat” but admitting that he has never read Friedrich Hayek, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and social theorist, who is arguably most responsible for the contemporary libertarian movement. Moulitsas’ co-author (of “Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics”), Jerome Armstrong, talks a grand game about revolutionary change, but signed on as a paid consultant to former Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, an archetypal centrist Democrat whose vapid presidential campaign ended almost as quickly as it began. When MoveOn — the Web-based “colossus” whose e-mail appeals, Bai says, have always centered on the same message: “Republicans were evil, arrogant and corrupt” — devised its member-generated agenda, it came up with a low-calorie three-point plan: “health care for all”; “energy independence through clean, renewable sources”; and “democracy restored.”

I would guess that Gillespie is off a few lists, too. But the entire point is not something really new. A lot of people on the more right-leaning side of the 'sphere have been pointing out this lack of ideas for quite some time. Mostly what the Democrats are about these days is being against George Bush. Even the "ideas" they are promoting sound good in theory but are not really well thought out. (Just take a look at the developing trainwreck of biofuels that I have documented over and over again.)

Without those big ideas, politics becomes a mechanical process – which is exactly what Bai is saying the Democrats are focusing on now – the machinery of politics. Gillespie points out that the Republicans are not exactly overflowing with big ideas at this point, either. But they have a real opportunity to get back to those big ideas. Especially with the other side's fixation on how the little gears and levers work.