Mea Culpa

Project Valour-IT is holding its annual fundraiser. I have been remiss and have not put the donation button up or blogged about this. I won't offer an excuse. I will, however, ask you to help support wounded American servicemen. Being from an old Army family, it is obvious which team I have signed on to. But it does not matter which branch of the military you support here - the competition is strictly for fun.

The goal is completely serious.

Please consider giving to a good cause.

Project Valour-IT, in memory of SFC William V. Ziegenfuss, helps provide voice-controlled and adaptive laptop computers to wounded Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries at major military medical centers. Operating laptops by speaking into a microphone or using other adaptive technologies, our wounded heroes are able to send and receive messages from friends and loved ones, surf the 'Net, and communicate with buddies still in the field. The experience of MAJ Charles “Chuck” Ziegenfuss, a partner in the project who suffered serious hand wounds while serving in Iraq, illustrates how important these laptops can be to a wounded service member's recovery.

Read More…

Please consider helping a good cause.

The Uncanny Ability

Massimo Calabresi, writing in Time Magazine, has some astonishing maneuvering by Democrats that is going on right now. setting themselves up for even more humiliation on a national security debacle. Calabresi phrases it thusly: " The Democrats, however, have an uncanny ability to milk humiliation out of national security debates…" This is amazing.

The end is near for the Democrats' sorry handling of Michael Mukasey's nomination to be Attorney General, but that doesn't mean they are ready to close the book on the most recent debate over torture. The Senate Judiciary Committee voted to confirm the New York judge to head the Justice Department Tuesday, sending his nomination to the Senate floor, where it is expected to win broad support. That should end another humiliating national security-related defeat for the party, leaving members free to move on to issues where they stand a better chance of outmaneuvering Republicans, such as health care for kids or tax reform.

The Democrats, however, have an uncanny ability to milk humiliation out of national security debates, and behind the scenes the party's top Senate leaders are arguing over whether to pursue the issue of torture while they have the country's attention. Even though the party failed to block Mukasey over his refusal to state definitively that waterboarding is illegal, some Democrats believe they can win a straight vote to criminalize the harsh interrogation technique. Others fear that a renewed fight over torture would end not just in another defeat, but in an implicit congressional stamp of approval for the very practice they want to outlaw.

Calabresi reports that staffers are saying that Chuck Schumer is pushing - hard - for a vote on the Kennedy amendment (banning waterboarding). Others are counciling that going ahead with that without all the votes already in pocket is a potential disaster. This article indicates where the Democrats are having problems. They are losing fight after fight on Capitol Hill. That is causing their far left fringe to go bananas on them. But consider: Today they had a chance to go after Cheney - who the accuse daily of scurrilous behavior. They passed on that as fast as they could dance around it. They gave Michael Mukasey a horribly bad time - after Schumer suggested him as a compromise - then lost that battle.

They are letting their left wing drive them into humiliating defeats, over and over and over. In their zeal to appear to be doing something, they are doing nothing. In their zeal to attack all things Bush, they are beating hell out of themselves.

Thank heavens they never seem to learn.

In The Valley Of Who Cares

A twofer from Jonah Goldberg today. In USA Today, Goldberg looks at the deluge of anti-war (and often anti-American) films that Hollywood is spewing this year. One after another, the studios pump their agenda films out. One by one the films fail at the box office - every single one has been a bigger bomb than Ishtar. Goldberg thinks he knows why:

To be sure, many of these films don't attack the troops directly. Some are thoughtful in their critiques, others less so. Regardless, this is still uncharted territory. "These movies certainly are more willing to be critical of the military and misconduct of individual soldiers. Certainly no such feature was made like these during … the Vietnam War," Charles Ferguson, a political scientist and creator of the anti-Iraq war documentary, No End In Sight, recently told The Philadelphia Inquirer. But here's the interesting part: So far, these movies are tanking. Rendition opened on 2,250 screens, with three Oscar winners in the cast, and it was beaten its opening weekend by a re-release of the 14-year-old A Nightmare Before Christmas. Elah was a bigger bomb than those used in the "shock and awe" campaign. The Kingdom earned less than $50 million, and surely only did that well because it was marketed as an action movie rather than an anti-war one. Jeanine Basinger, a film historian at Wesleyan University, speculates that "these films are coming forward during the progress of a war and questioning it sooner may mean that the general public is rejecting what our leaders are telling us … and want to know more about the war."

This is an odd, yet unsurprising, interpretation in an age when The Daily Show is a primary news source.

The public doesn't get to decide what movies are made. As President Bush might say, Hollywood is the "decider." The public determines which movies are successful. Perhaps the studios of yesteryear knew something today's moguls don't. Maybe Americans don't like to see America and her troops run down, even during an unpopular war.

When Peter Berg tested The Kingdom on Americans, he was horrified when the audience cheered when the FBI killed the terrorists at the end. "Am I experiencing American bloodlust?" the director agonized. Berg's contemptuous reaction toward American audiences may point to a few of the reasons these movies are faring poorly at American box offices.

First, economics. Hollywood cares less and less about what Americans think of their products because as domestic movie attendance has declined, Hollywood shifted its aim to foreign markets. In America, filmmakers are at pains to insist their anti-war fare isn't anti-American. No such distinctions need be made when these films open at Cannes, Venice and Toronto. Denouncing the war isn't only good marketing in Europe, it's the fastest route to critical acclaim.

Second, Americans may not be as passionately opposed to the war as the polls have led Hollywood to believe. Left-wing bloggers, hyper-rich Democratic donors and anti-war activists hate the war with biblical fury. But many average Americans are depressed by the war because, until recently, it was going so badly. The polls don't capture this distinction very well.

I have to agree with Goldberg here - that is virtually the same thing I have been saying since last November. The Democrats and Hollywood are both badly misreading the polls and what they mean. But I think there may actually be something else at work here. I rather suspect that there is a certain endless movie loop playing in the heads of many of these people. What Mark Steyn aptly titled the Full Metal Deer Apocalypse.

Folks in Hollywood have a difficult time separating movies from reality. Hence someone like Sean Daniels can write - apparently with a straight face - about what happened at Faber College in 1962. Which, in the real world, is precisely nothing - because Faber College only exists in the celluloid jungle of Animal House. These producers and directors passionately believe they are downtrodden heroes fighting the helplessly heroic battle against The Man. They don't see a bit of irony in complaining about being silenced on coast-to-coast network television. They conclude that evil conspiracies exist against them when their products fail in the market because they have intentionally alienated at least half of their audience.

They will not believe their bad judgment led to the failure of their films. They don't understand that many Americans are looking at what is being offered by Hollywood and are saying, "Who cares?"  (That, incidentally, is why the writer's strike is so very badly timed for both the writers and the producers. Because by the time those two sides settle things, people may have moved along from what they have been offering.)

Bringing A Knife To An Antler Fight

An Arkansas man managed to fight off an overly aggressive buck using only a hunting knife. Greg Vincent thought he was telling a joke when he told his son he'd use the knife to defend them - then the deer charged.

"We had left our guns at the camp, and all I had was a hunting knife," he said.

Most deer will run off when they see a person. Not this one.

"I took out my knife and jokingly told the boys I would take care of the deer if it attacked," he said. Then the animal lowered its head, shook its antlers, snorted, pawed the ground and advanced on them.

It got close to Kyle, and that's when Vincent rushed the animal. He grabbed the antlers, jerked the deer's head around and stabbed it in the ribs. Vincent said he hoped that would make the animal run away, but the animal kept struggling.

Vincent hung onto the deer's neck as they tumbled into a creek and he dropped the knife. He yelled for the boys to find the knife, and nephew Dillon Vincent placed the knife in his uncle's hand.

"When I stabbed the neck, I pulled the knife as hard as I could," Greg Vincent said, ripping a large gash that probably would have been fatal. The deer continued to struggle but was growing weaker. Vincent, who was a competitive weightlifter in high school, was tiring, too. Within moments, his father, Harvey Vincent, finished off the animal with a shot from Kyle's rifle.

That kind of behavior is fairly unusual, even during the rutting season. It may have been a hit deer from the Animal Uprising™. It could have been worse, though. It could have been a giant hermaphrodite demon deer.

More Proof That Drugs Make You Stupid

So a guy walks into a police station in Connecticut, smoking a cigar. He was told that there was no smoking in the station, so he stubbed the cigar out. But when officers sniffed around a little bit, they realized that the cigar contained marijuana.

Capt. Robert Myles says Scott Snow walked into the station early Saturday and blew smoke from his cigar into a small opening in the bullet-resistant glass separating desk officers from the public.

Myles says the 24-year-old man was told there's no smoking inside the building and he allegedly stubbed out the cigar on the counter.

Officers came out and smelled the distinctive odor of marijuana and arrested Snow.

The cigar might hide the pot, but it still smells like pot when it burns, genius. Meanwhile, in Texas, another criminal mastermind reported that two men had robbed him of 150 pounds of marijuana.

Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies arrived at the home near Penitas in South Texas to find the door kicked in and nearly 15 pounds of pot lying on the floor, Sheriff Lupe Trevino said.

Jose Guadalupe Flores, 35, escaped while the men ransacked the house but returned later and told the deputies he had been wrapping the drugs for shipment when the intruders arrived.

"The guy walked right up and said the drugs were his," Trevino said. "That's not the smartest move."

Flores also happens to be an illegal immigrant from Mexico. And a few fries short of a Happy Meal, it would appear.

Kucinich’s Articles Of Impeachment Sent To Judiciary Committee

Believe it or not, the House Republican leadership ordered members to vote to send Dennis Kucinich's articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney to the House Judiciary Committee.

Update at 4:30 p.m. ET: Perhaps we should pause to explain. When most  Republicans unexpectedly — and on orders of GOP leadership, the AP is reporting — switched sides and voted against tabling the measure, they essentially forced Democrats to keep talking about it on the floor. That's in direct contrast to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's wishes. She has said an impeachment of Cheney or President Bush is off the table.

"We're going to help them out, to explain themselves,"  Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, told the AP. "We're going to give them their day in court."

I don't know if this was a good idea or not, but it sure looks like Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer just got slapped pretty hard - and they are going to have to pull out all the stops to derail this thing.

UPDATE: Ok, now I am seeing what they did. By sending it into committee, the articles of impeachment are effectively dead. The Dems have dodged a major bullet by not having to debate this openly - but they now have a compound problem with their nutroots. The Republicans appear to have pulled off a brilliant move here. They poked Pelosi and Hoyer hard, forced the bill into committee and now can watch the leadership deal with their left fringe.

Fake But Inaccurate

Jonah Goldberg notices that the lines between fake news and real news are rapidly being erased. In an effort to try to pry younger viewers away from shows like The Colbert Report, television news is increasingly losing track of reality.

Or take Stephen Colbert, host of a fake cable news show, "The Colbert Report," itself a spinoff from the fake newscast "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." Colbert was recently a guest on "Meet the Press" — the Thunderdome of real news — as he was trying to mount a bogus campaign for president (abandoned Monday). Colbert stayed in character. So did Tim Russert, grilling Colbert as if he were a real candidate, of sorts.

The exchange vexed Ana Marie Cox, Washington editor of Time.com, who rightly ridiculed the stunt as "painfully so-ironic-it-was-unironic." Cox has a good ear for such things: Her own meteoric rise started with her tenure as the founding Wonkette blogger, where she mocked newsmakers the way robots mocked bad movies on "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Cox sized up the Colbert-Russert show as cringe-worthy — bad journalism because it was bad entertainment.

Williams fared better at "Saturday Night Live," successfully showing off his lighter side. But, as with Russert's stunt, it was another naked attempt by NBC to lure younger viewers back to real news. Indeed, while the network news broadcasts are sustained by the consumers of denture cream, adult diapers and pharmacological marital aides, it's "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" that have a grip on the hip, iPhone crowd. And plenty of those younger viewers seem to believe that they can deduce what's going on in the real world from jokes on a fake newscast. It's no longer funny because it's true. It's true because it's funny.

Goldberg points out that broadcast journalism has always been the most shallow of the various branches of the journalism tree. As Don Henley put it: "We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde who comes on at five. She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam in her eye." In that respect, it really isn't much different today than it has been in years. But the older talking head set used to at least pretend to be journalists, even if they were nothing more than actors reading someone else's words. The blurring of the lines is not a good thing. As Goldberg concludes:

What I find dismaying is that "relevance" is literally coming at the expense of reality.

And that is a problem, isn't it?

Hoyer Sinks Kucinich

UPDATED Again: The Republican Leadership ordered members to vote to send the articles to committee.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Hold everything. Hoyer's motion to table has been voted down by a 251-162 margin - and it looks like at least 149 Republicans voted not to table. It looks like they're trying to force an up or down vote on sending the articles to the judiciary committee.

Steny Hoyer just torpedoed the good (space) ship Kucinich by forcing the latter's motion to impeach Dick Cheney to be tabled. Well, the House leadership managed to avoid a public spectacle but will have just enraged the nutroots and sent them off into a foaming rage. The Baltimore Sun Swamp says this:

With Democrats averse to opening an intramural debate on an issue that divides their base, party leaders are expected to nip the measure in the bud this afternoon. Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told reporters this morning that he would move to table the measure when Kucinich introduces it.

"[House Speaker Nancy Pelosi] and I have both said impeachment is not on our agenda," Hoyer told reporters. "That does not make a judgment on that issue."

Hoyer’s motion appears likely to pass – an outcome that would further alienate an antiwar left already frustrated with a lack of progress by congressional Democrats on changing U.S. policy on Iraq.

They also quote this from the Huffnpuff Post:

"We are in a serious Constitutional crisis," Joseph A. Palermo, a professor of history at California State University, Sacramento, wrote this morning on the Huffington Post. "Democrats were elected to Congress to put the brakes on the Bush-Cheney juggernaut. … [Kucinich’s bill] is a long overdue measure coming from a Democrat who has the guts to stand up for the United States Constitution."

My god. It may be time to send the chauffeur to the barricades!

The 77% Problem

Rasmussen Reports has conducted a poll asking Americans what they thought of giving driver's licenses to illegal immigrants. The result, a super majority of 77% of Americans are against it outright. Only a paltry 16% favor it.

Seventy-seven percent (77%) of American adults are opposed to making drivers licenses available to people who are in the country illegally. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 16% take the opposite view and believe that undocumented immigrants should be allowed to get a license.

State surveys in Virginia and Kentucky show similar results.

Eighty-eight percent (88%) of Republicans oppose giving drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants. So do 68% of Democrats and 75% of those not affiliated with either major political party. There is little difference along gender, age, or income levels.

New York Governor Elliot Spitzer recently proposed making licenses available to people undocumented immigrants living in New York State. Spitzer’s plan attracted national attention at a Democratic Presidential debate last week when New York Senator Hillary Clinton was asked about the policy and stumbled through an unclear response.

Spitzer's Licenses for Lawbreakers® scheme is very likely going to be the wound that bleeds support away from Hillary Clinton. As James Pinkerton pointed out in his column today, the blood is in the water and the vein was opened by fellow Democrats.

Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Mukasey, 11-8

Judge Michael Mukasey has been approved by the Judiciary Committee, paving the way for his confirmation by the full Senate.

The 11-8 vote came only after two key Democrats accepted his assurance to enforce any law Congress might enact against waterboarding.

The White House and Senate Republicans called for a swift confirmation vote, which is expected by the end of next week.

"We appreciate the vote of senators on the Judiciary Committee to forward the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey to the full Senate," White House press secretary Dana Perino said. "Judge Mukasey has clearly demonstrated that he will be an exceptional attorney general at this critical time."

Though Mukasey is expected to easily win confirmation by the full Senate, Democrats and some Republicans were far from satisfied with his answers on torture, presidential signing statements and executive power.

The antics of getting political appointments through the Senate is becoming ridiculous. It was not like this until about the time Reagan was in office. Up until then, few appointments became battles. Now it seems they all do.

When Cows Fall

A Michigan couple were very very, very lucky on Sunday. While driving along in their minivan minding their own business, the quiet of the morning was shattered - as was their vehicle - when a 600 pound cow hurtled out of the sky and landed on the hood.

A Michigan couple is lucky to be alive after their minivan was hit by a falling cow on Sunday.

According to a report in the Wenatchee World newspaper, Charles Everson, Jr. and his wife Linda were driving on Highway 150 about one mile east of Mason in Chelan County when a cow fell about 200 feet off a cliff and landed on the hood of their minivan.

"It was 'bam'- you just saw something come down and hit the hood," Everson told the newspaper from a hotel room in Manson.

Everson, 49, and his wife were visiting the area from Westland, Michigan, near Detroit, and were headed back to their hotel after attending a church service.

The newspaper cites Everson saying he didn't see the animal until it hit and didn't realize what happened until after the impact.

"I'm like, 'I don't believe this, I don't believe this, I don't believe this,'" Everson told the newspaper.

(The original article is here - no pictures, though.) While we here at Blue Crab Boulevard could spend some time speculating on whether the hurtling heifer of horror jumped, fell or was pushed off the cliff that would be irresponsible. Instead, we believe we have the actual answer as to how the cow became a hood ornament: it did not fall off the cliff. It actually fell from outer space. And you know what that means!

It was a mooteorite.

The Bacon Offensive

Wild boars in eastern China have been raiding colleges, hospitals and other urban habitats in search of food. The badly behaved bacon went so far as to eat all the leftovers in a college kitchen and have been ramming into cars.

Dormitories and kitchens in the West Lake area of Hangzhou, capital of coastal Zhejiang province, had come under attack from ravenous boars rushing down from mountainous areas in recent days, the Shanghai Daily said.

"Authorities in the area are planning a campaign this winter to drive away the boar," it said.

One broke into a kitchen at a local university on Sunday, ate the leftovers and then "escaped to a mountainous area", the paper said.

This followed a report of a 200 kg (440 lb) hog rushing into a security guard's dormitory at a local hospital and jumping on to his daughter's bed.

"The animal then ran toward the intersection of Shuguang Road and Lingyin Road, ramming into a taxi and fleeing to Quyuan Courtyard. The boar was never found," the paper said.

Well, at least it's not The Boar of the Baskervilles, they know what the hunters need to look for. All they have to do is follow the trail of dented taxies.

The Role Of Beautiful Waterfalls

Anne Applebaum has a column up over at Slate that reflects on the role of useful idiots in the world. She starts out with the Russian revolution then moves on to the country that is acting as the modern stand-in, Venezuela.

Ninety years ago this week, a Bolshevik mob stormed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, arrested the provisional government, and installed a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in its place. Though the Russian revolution is no longer widely celebrated (not even by the Russians, who instead commemorate the expulsion of the Poles from Moscow in 1612), I felt it important to mark the occasion. In honor of the anniversary, I reread Ten Days That Shook the World, the famed account of the revolution written by John Reed, the American journalist and fellow-traveler. Then I reread last week's press reports of the recent encounter between Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, and Naomi Campbell, the famed British supermodel.

Just as I'd remembered, Reed's book superbly transmits the breathless energy of the autumn of 1917—"Adventure it was, and one of the most marvelous mankind ever embarked upon, sweeping into history at the head of the toiling masses"—as well as his own fascination with, and approval of, the violence he sees around him. After attending a mass funeral, he understands, he writes, why the Russians no longer need religion: "On earth they were building a kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer, and for which it was a glory to die." By contrast, he is abashed when he has to explain that in America people try to change things by law—a state of affairs that his new Russian comrades find "incredible."

Campbell is just the latest in a string of jet-setters, Hollywood types and others who are jumping on the Chavez bandwagon. It's a bizarre symbiotic relationship:

But then, that wasn't the point of her visit, just as it wasn't when actor Sean Penn, a self-conscious "radical" and avowed enemy of the American president, spent a whole day with President Chávez. Together, the two of them toured the countryside. "I came here looking for a great country. I found a great country," Penn declared. But of course he found a great country! Penn wanted a country where he would win adulation for his views about U.S. politics, and the Venezuelan president happily provided it.

The Hollywood types feel heroic, Chavez gets photo-ops with the stars. It's just a win-win for them. Of course, the models and the actors and the dilettantes don't have to look too closely at the realities.

The package also would strip the central bank of its autonomy, give Chavez control over international reserves, empower authorities to detain citizens without charge and open the way to censoring the media in so-called political emergencies……

……The referendum package introduces new legal concepts such as "social property" and "collective property," promoting them above individual interests as part of a constitutional goal of creating a socialist economy.

So Campbell can laud Venezuela's beautiful waterfalls without having to address the increasingly thuggish regime. Sean Penn can feel the adoring love of the masses in Venezuela without having to look at the continuing theft of assets. Everyone a winner. Except the people living the nightmare.

When The Circus Comes To Town

The clowns are out in force. Today is the day that Dennis Kucinich - D(ingbat) Ohio, will introduce his "privileged resolution" to impeach Dick Cheney. Michelle Malkin has the wording of the resolution up over at her site, along with the list of co-sponsors. Which is pretty much a roll of the lunatic wing of the Democratic party. The Republicans learned - the hard way - that running an vehemently partisan impeachment proceeding was a great way to alienate voters. Some folks either are incapable of learning or are under mind control. We're guessing the latter.

The New Dukakis?

James Pinkerton, writing at Newsday, points out the almost eerie similarities between what happened to Michael Dukakis in 1988 and what just happened to Hillary Clinton. In both cases, it was a fellow Democrat who opened the vein and started leaking blood into the water.

The Democratic presidential front-runner is charging ahead, blowing past weak opposition. A lagging Democratic rival raises a critical issue in a candidates' debate, but does so in a halfhearted manner that gets little traction among Democrats. So the front-runner stays out front, as the others falter and fall out.

But damage has been done to the front-runner. A wound has been opened, a slow hemorrhaging has commenced, even if Democrats don't notice.

Over on the other side of the aisle, Republicans see the crimson trail - and smell blood. So they sit back and wait, until the general election.

That's the story of the 1988 presidential campaign. I know, because I was there. And that's also looking to be the story of the 2008 campaign.

It was none other than Al Gore who unleashed the prison furlough problem on Dukakis. A vastly unpopular program in his home state, it became a massive problem for the candidate during the general election. So it is with the Eliot Spitzer licenses for lawbreakers scheme in New York. Clinton has a real problem. Having backed the program, she will now begin to suffer at the hands of an enraged populace of voters who are overwhelmingly in favor of securing the border and stopping the flood of illegals into this country.