Slime From The Fever Swamps

As sickening as this is, in a way it is a good thing that the mask has slipped. Any Democratic party politician who accepts any aid from MoveOn.org should have to address this bit of shark-jumping from that group. Because when you call the general commanding American troops in the field - with the approval of the United States Senate - a traitor, you have crossed a line.

Tomorrow–as General David Petraeus provides his Iraq assessment to Congress–the antiwar group MoveOn.org is running a full-page advertisement in the New York Times under the headline: "General Petraeus or General Betray us? Cooking the books for the White House."

Let's be clear: MoveOn.org is suggesting that General Petraeus has 'betrayed' his country. This is disgusting. To attack as a traitor an American general commanding forces in war because his 'on the ground' experience does not align with MoveOn.org's political objectives is utterly shameful. It shows contempt for America's military leadership, as well as for the troops who have confidence in him, as our fellow soldiers in Iraq certainly do.

General Petraeus has served this country for over 35 years with honor, distinction, and integrity. And this is not just about General Petraeus. After all, if General Petraeus is "cooking the books," then the entire military chain of command in Baghdad, and all the staff, military and civilian, who have been working with General Petraeus are complicit, since Petraeus did not write his report in isolation. They are all, apparently, 'betray[ing] us.'

MoveOn.org has been working closely with the Democratic congressional leadership –as an article in today's Sunday New York Times Magazine makes clear. And consider this comment by a Democratic senator from Friday's Politico: "'No one wants to call [Petraeus] a liar on national TV,' noted one Democratic senator, who spoke on the condition on anonymity. 'The expectation is that the outside groups will do this for us.

If any Democrat thinks they have a shield because MoveOn did it - not them - it is time to disabuse them of that notion. The disgusting, sleazy level of slime that MoveOn has reached here is beyond contempt.

Mistake?

I have disagreed with Joe Gandelman on occasion; more often we agree on a lot of points. In this case, I'm going with the disagree. Joe points out that he thinks General David Petraeus is making a Public Relations mistake by granting an exclusive interview to Fox News after his testimony to Congress tomorrow.

So much for a p.r. campaign that will extend beyond pulling out all stops to try and shore up more than just the Republican Party’s base.

The reality is even though Fox News does have some excellent journalists, it has the reputation of being essentially the administration’s favorite media outlet (along with appearances on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity). Rightfully or wrongfully, it has the reputation of going easier on administration officials than newspeople of other networks do.

If the administration and Pentagon had political smarts, they would let the General talk to Fox and at least one other news network immediately after his talk.

But now they will be open to charges — rightfully or wrongfully — that they went on a network widely seen as “friendly,” a network skewed to Republicans once again indicating that the administration runs a government of the base, by the base and for the base.

That may be unfair, but just watch the reaction. By giving an exclusive interview to Fox, journalists from other outlets including the print media are going to conclude that the administration has some things to hide because they didn’t have the guts to send their key people out to talk to reporters who might ask tougher and more hostile questions and confront the toughest questions, challenges and even hostile attitudes head-on.

Here's the thing. The major media - absent Fox News - today is going nuts trying to undermine Petraeus. Here's some headlines:

Democrats Already Discrediting Upcoming Petraeus Report

Wide Skepticism Ahead of Assessment

Iraq debate is sea of statistics

Yeah, the left is already foaming at the mouth about this interview. Yeah, maybe I would have played it a bit differently if I was calling the shots. But I can also see where there is some need to get some word out that is not being filtered through media that has already telegraphed it's "anti-message" bias so thoroughly. Sure, Petraeus and the administration are going to get hammered for this. But they are already getting hammered anyway. At some point you have to refuse a rigged game or just give up. Maybe this wasn't the best time for it, maybe its a brilliant move. Petraeus has much, much, much higher favorable ratings with the American public than Congress or even Bush. This might be a more surprisingly favorable move than Joe or other critics foresee.

Funniest Attack On Al Gore Yet

He may be the veritable Pope of the First Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of Global Warming™ and the absolute hero of all of his sycophants, but Al Gore is about to be targeted - hard - by protesters. Not some right-wing, oil company financed people, either. Oh, no. This is almost too funny.

PETA is going after the Goreacle. With a vengeance.

He may be the hero of the environmental movement for his crusade against global warming but Al Gore is about to be targeted by animal rights activists over his carnivorous contribution to greenhouse gases.

Citing United Nations research that the meat industry is worse for the environment than driving and flying, animal rights groups are directing a campaign at the former American vice-president's diet.

When he delivers a lecture on global warming in Denver next month, protesters will display billboards bearing a cartoon image of Mr Gore eating a drumstick and the message: "Too chicken to go vegetarian? Meat is the No 1 cause of global warming".

The campaign is being organised by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) and is backed by other animal rights groups.

"For Al Gore, the fact that his diet is a leading contributor to global warming is a highly inconvenient truth - pun intended," said Matt Prescott, a spokesman for Peta.

It isn't enough that Gore uses 20 times the national average in energy at his home in Tennessee. It isn't enough that he flies in Gulfstream jets that emit around 10 tons of CO2 per 1,000 nautical miles. It isn't even enough that he chows down on endangered (or at least highly threatened) species. Maybe this time the biggest hypocrite in modern memory will finally get some attention. Nah, probably not. The media ignores the facts about Al and they studiously ignore PETA.

But the picture they are using is funnier than all heck.

Some Kids Are All Wrong

Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away
Bells chime, I know I gotta get away
And I know if I don't, I'll go out of my mind
Better leave her behind with the kids, they're alright
The kids are alright

(P. Townshend (The Who), The Kids Are Alright)

We here in the Crabitat have nothing against kids, in general. Oh sure, some kids are better behaved than others, some are little monsters and some take great pleasure in making life a living hell for all the adults they come in contact with. But generally most kids are alright. But we're talking about kids, not kids.

HARVARD – A baby goat caused a local woman to crash her car into a tree Thursday afternoon, law enforcement officials said.

Chery Keller, 54, was holding the animal on her lap while she was sitting in her car parked in the driveway of 20224 Route 173, McHenry County Sheriff's Sgt. Steve Schmitt said.

The baby goat kicked the vehicle into reverse, prompting Keller to panic, Schmitt said.

"She put the car in drive, floored it and struck a tree," Schmitt said. "The deputy thought she was lying, but the smell … it smelled like a goat in [her car]."

The most novel defense in recent automotive history: the goat made me do it. Now, having raised a boy through the teenage years, we can attest that it is sometimes impossible to tell whether a kid or a kid has been living in the kid's room. So we're not sure if the smell test is appropriate for determining if a kid was in the car. As opposed to a kid. (We're beginning to confuse ourselves here.) It's not like this is the first time we're reported on goats in vehicles, mind you. But we still don't understand why the woman wanted a kid in her car. It could grow up to be a drunken carnivore after all.

This Is A Shocker

And I mean that sincerely. I knew that the Norman Hsu story was too big and smelly for the media to ignore, but I did not expect the New York Times to get out in front of it like this. They have a big article on it - and it is getting uncomfortable to be a Democrat who took money from Hsu - or anyone involved with him. Because it is looking like Hsu (or his company) paid large amounts of money to others - who then contributed heavily to Democrats. It looks very much like there may be felonies involved here.

The records show that Components Ltd., a company controlled by Mr. Hsu that has no obvious business purpose and appears to exist only on paper, has paid a total of more than $100,000 to at least nine people who made campaign contributions to Mrs. Clinton and others through Mr. Hsu. The payments occurred in the spring of 2003, several months before Mr. Hsu emerged as a contributor to Democrats and more than a year before he started bundling checks from those same people for various campaigns. In all, he has raised more than $1 million for Democrats.

The records make clear that the group was more than just a loose collection of friends, family and co-workers that bundlers typically rely on when raising money for a candidate. Rather, each person had a direct financial relationship with Mr. Hsu, either receiving money from his company or paying into it, even though many of them appear to have other jobs or businesses independent of him. The purpose of the payments, and whether they related to business costs, fees or expenses, is unclear……..

……..The financial records for Components Ltd. show that Mr. Su’s wife, Lelawattie Su, wired $100,000 to the company in May 2003, and that Mr. Hsu used that money to wire $109,500 the next day to a woman in California. On another occasion, Mr. Paw wired $20,000 to Components Ltd., and Mr. Hsu immediately wired $30,000 to another company whose location could not be determined.

In roughly that same period, Components Ltd. issued three checks to Mr. Paw totaling about $16,000, and checks and wire transfers totaling more than $100,000 to eight other people, including a worker at a rehabilitation center for the handicapped, a housewife, a nurse, a real estate developer, a plastics company executive and his wife, and a clothing shop manager.

Mr. Hsu later bundled campaign contributions from all of those people, including Mr. Paw and six members of his family, along with Mr. and Mrs. Su. The Paws and Sus together contributed more than $400,000 since 2004 to Democrats across the country, usually in tandem with Mr. Hsu.

Wow, this story just went vertical. This is going to get very ugly indeed with the NYT even jumping in - and digging out even worse dirt. Someone - a lot of someones, actually - have some explaining to do. I'm sure the ones asking the questions will have badges.

Gasbags Pointing Fingers

It has become completely routine. Gasoline prices rise, Democrats begin screeching about the evil oil companies and their "price-gouging". They demand investigations, screech and wail a while longer, then move along to the next thing they can get headlines with. Meanwhile, the investigations do occur and the results are ignored.

Last summer, Congress again called on the FTC to investigate.

Last month, the agency issued its report. The findings? Last year's spike was caused by . . . market forces.

That mirrors its 2006 report, which similarly found "no evidence of manipulation" in the post-Katrina price jumps.

The problem, instead, was a series of simultaneous events: climbing crude prices, refining capacity that had been reduced by storm damage and increased U.S. demand for gasoline.

That's not to say that only supply and demand are to blame. The reports also finger congressional policies - specifically regarding ethanol.

Last summer, refiners were essentially forced to start using more of the corn-derived additive, nearly doubling its cost per gallon. Demand for ethanol became so intense that refiners began importing almost 20 percent of their supply, despite a 54-cent-a-gallon tariff.

The New York Post has lots of handy quotes by the posturing gasbags in Congress. There's an old adage about pointing fingers at others. When you do so, you point three back at yourself. The terribly short-sighted stampede to use ethanol has real costs - and will cause real damage soon enough. I have linked time and again to expert opinions that say the rush to biofuel is terminally stupid. Not that any of that will make the gasbags change their ways. Or stop pointing fingers.

Joining Rosie On The Melted Steely Knoll

Mark Steyn coins a new phrase for the folks who are screeching that 9/11 was an "inside job". The man has a way with words. Today's column in the Orange County Register looks at the war on terror and the odd way people are looking at it and some of the bizarre, uniquely American responses.

Six years on, most Americans are now pretty certain what they'll wake up to in the morning: There'll be a thwarted terrorist plot somewhere or other – last week, it was Germany. Occasionally, one will succeed somewhere or other, on the far horizon – in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, London. But not many folks expect to switch on the TV this Tuesday morning, as they did that Tuesday morning, and see smoke billowing from Atlanta or Phoenix or Seattle. During the IRA's 30-year campaign, the British grew accustomed (perhaps too easily accustomed) to waking up to the news either of some prominent person's assassination or that a couple of grandmas and some schoolkids had been blown apart in a shopping center. It was a terrorist war in which terrorism was almost routine. But, in the six years since President Bush declared that America was in a "war on terror," there has been in America no terrorism.

In theory, the administration ought to derive a political benefit from this: The president has "kept America safe." But, in practice, the placidity of the domestic front diminishes the chosen rationale of the conflict: if a "war on terror" has no terror, who says there's a war at all? That's the argument of the left – that it's all a racket cooked up by the Bushitlerburton fascists to impose on America a permanent national-security state in which, for dark sinister reasons of his own, Dick Cheney is free to monitor your out-of-state phone calls all day long.

Judging from the blithe expressions of commuters doing the shoeless shuffle through the security line at LAX and O'Hare, most Americans seem relatively content with a permanent national-security state. It's a curious paradox: airports on permanent Orange Alert, and a citizenry on permanent … well, I'm not sure there's a Homeland Security color code for "Gaily Insouciant," but, if there is, it's probably a bland limpid pastel of some kind. Of course, if tomorrow there's a big smoking hole where the Empire State Building used to be, we'll be back to: "The president should have known! This proves the failure of his policies over the last six years! We need another all-star commission filled with retired grandees!"

That very lack of terrorist acts inside America is partially responsible for the rise in conspiracy theories. Its an odd problem. The British became essentially numb to terror because of over-familiarity, we appear to have become numb to terror because of a lack of terror. (Neither Steyn nor I am arguing that there should be any terror, mind you. It's just pointing out that you can reach the same end result from two completely different paths.) Steyn points out the exact same thing one commenter did here about the "truthers": any government sufficiently evil and sufficiently capable of actually attacking its own citizens on 9/11 - performing that "inside job - would have simply made the truthers disappear when they first raised their heads. Period. If you can buy the garbage that CheneyBushHailliburtonHitlerCo pulled off 9/11, making a truther disappear in an accident would be child's play. And it would have happened.

So we reach a point where easily-led people are jostling to take their place with Rosie on her melted steely knoll and are paying no attention to the real menace that really does exist. We have 9/11 families suing everyone in America over the terror act - but not the real perpetrators. We have grown numb to the reality and turned inward. We allow ourselves to become mired in a swamp of legalities and conspiracies and our (quite real) enemies laugh at us.

South Carolina Braces For Invasion

No, it is not a remake of General Sherman's march. It is much more serious than that. Experts are warning of a massive squirrel invasion. No, really. Apparently, the hive mind of the squirrels have decided they want to move in on South Carolina.

The same Easter freeze that devastated South Carolina's peach crop could lead to a phenomenon unseen in these parts for nearly 40 years: a massive squirrel migration.

Sure, the term sounds funny, but it's serious stuff. In September 1968, squirrels searching for more hospitable living conditions along the Eastern Seaboard ended up dead along the highways and floating in lake spillways throughout the Southeast.

Wildlife officials have no idea whether another September migration is near, but they do see a repeat of one factor in the most recent one: The Easter freeze wiped out white oak acorn production.

That most likely means residents in areas hit by the freeze — such as York County — will have to deal with more squirrels than normal raiding backyard bird-feeders.

The S.C. Department of Natural Resources does an annual survey of hard-shelled seeds like acorns in the Upstate as part of its management of deer and bear hunting. Scouts found most white oak trees didn't produce acorns this year, said Dennis Chastain, a Pickens County naturalist who helped with the survey.

Hunters scouting deer-feeding areas report similar findings in the Midlands.

In a normal year, red oaks, which have a different biological clock than white oaks, could produce enough acorns to compensate for the poor white oak acorn production. But this year, red oak acorns won't be enough because the drought also has wiped out other food sources, Chastain said.

More squirrels in people's backyards is a nuisance. But wildlife officials are concerned that bears and deer will show up more around houses in the Upstate, sparking more animal-human encounters.

So the squirrels are bringing friends, too. Not good. Frankly, we think the best course of action for residents of South Carolina is to move at once.

Another Foul Plot Undone

Campers in Burgess Junction, Wyoming were fortunate to have discovered the latest plot by the Animal Uprising™ to snag innocent humans. In yet another case of volleyball good really, really bad, they discovered a moose attempting to disguise himself as a volleyball net and called the authorities.

They say love is blind, even for an apparently frisky moose temporarily rendered sightless by a volleyball net.

Seems a wayward 2- to 3-year-old bull moose leaving his scent near Burgess Junction in the Big Horn Mountains on Labor Day got entangled in a volleyball net from a nearby campground, prompting worried campers to call in the services of two game wardens to help the moose see the light.

Turns out, the work of warden Tim Thomas and partner Alan Osterland was a net gain for everyone involved.

The moose apparently got the net entangled in its mature antlers and over its eyes, practically blindfolding the 800-pound beast in the process.

Thomas believes the moose was probably trying to leave its scent on a pole containing the volleyball net, as this is the time when a moose's libido is high.

After arriving on the scene that included a handful of onlookers near Prune Creek, Thomas and Osterland took their positions behind and in front of the moose, respectively.

Thomas fired a dart into the moose's left hip. Once the big boy fell, Thomas and Osterland took to cutting off the net and administering antibiotics.

According to the report, Thomas has seen this sort of thing before - and even worse. A deer disguised as a Christmas tree, for example. The article does not include photographs, but it must have looked something like this.