Michael Mukasey Confirmed As Attorney General

The United States Senate has voted to confirm Michael Mukasey as Attorney General.

WASHINGTON - The Senate moved to confirm Michael Mukasey as the nation's newest attorney general Thursday despite differences over his position on the legality of harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects.

His supporters, which included several Democrats, said Mukasey is the best prospect lawmakers are going to get in the waning months of a Bush administration unwilling to nominate anyone else.

"This is the only chance we have," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

But members of her own party didn't agree that Mukasey is better than somebody appointed and not subject to Senate confirmation. Mukasey, his opponents argued, said he didn't know if waterboarding is illegal torture and put the onus on Congress to pass a law against the practice.

Stop the posturing - either pass a law or shut up about it. Instead of trying to backdoor it and dodge responsibility - including responsibility for any negative outcomes as a result of your actions - pass the law or stop politicking this to death.

Crunching Numbers

Tobin Harshaw at the New York Times Opinionator caught this (it popped up on Memeorandum). Charles Franklin over at Pollster.com has crunched a lot of poll results for a long period of time and has found something very interesting. There has been a very well defined shift in public opinion about the war in Iraq. That is not to say that the numbers are positive - they are not. But the shift in "war going well" opinion has been trending up, steadily, since July. The "going badly" numbers have shown a mirror image drop. These results are the compilation of several well respected polls and the graphs are pretty striking. Franklin writes:

The single most striking shift is the change in opinion about how the war in Iraq is going. After four and a half years of steady downward trends, there has been a reversal of direction since July.

CBS, CNN and Pew have asked "How well is the military effort in Iraq going?" since the war started (with some minor variation in wording. See the details here.) The virtue of this question is its consistent use over time and its summary evaluation of the war.

President Bush's change of policy in Iraq in January, coupling a change of command with a surge of troop levels did not produce immediately positive responses from the public. Likewise the rise in U.S. casualties in the spring following the change in deployment strategy certainly might have been expected to further erode support for the war and for Bush.

But in retrospect the actions have been accompanied by two phases of changing opinion on "how the war is going". From January through June, the long running collapse in positive evaluation of the war (especially in the second half of 2006) halted. The flattening now appears to have clearly coincided with the change in command and troop levels.

This flattening didn't signal rising opinion on the war– but after dropping over 13 percentage points in six months, simply arresting the collapse was a major plus for the administration. And this is a particularly striking thing given that the spring of 2007 was a focal point for critiques of the war in Congress, with Democratic leadership repeatedly pushing votes that would have required changes in Iraq policy of various kinds. And this flattening came at the same time that casualties rose.

The second phase of opinion change started in early July, when positive evaluations of the war took their first upturn since late 2003 (around the time of the capture of Saddam Husein). The trend estimate has turned up some 8 percentage points since July 1, still not back to early 2006 levels, but remarkable this late in an unpopular war and with a weak leader and determined opposition.

Harshaw at the Times noted a fast response remark from Kevin Drum:

“So: over the past three months the PR campaign from General Petraeus combined with the decline in casualties has produced about a five point increase in the number of people who think the war is going well. But over the same time, it’s also produced a three or four point increase in the number of people who oppose the war. Apparently, the American public increasingly opposes the war regardless of how well it’s going.”

Harshaw also dryly notes:

It’s a good point, but I suspect some will feel Mr. Drum shows a bit too much pleasure in making it.

Regular readers know I don't think much of snapshot poll results. Trends are another thing entirely. Franklin has done a bang up job of getting all this data together - and the data shows a definite pattern. There appears to be some change in public opinion that is quite real. Of course, a great deal can happen between now and the election. But I actually rather suspect that these numbers are why the Democrats have dialed back their rhetoric a bit lately. That would seem to fit the trend as well. (It's worth reading all of Franklin's analysis - he makes a number of very good points that bear thinking about.)

Frustrating

Yesterday, I posted not one but two warnings about a fraudulent website that supposedly exposed the theory of anthropogenic global warming as being completely wrong. I posted in my update who the entire thing traced back to. People are still being caught by this scam. Folks, I do not think this was a hoax. I think it was a quite intentional fraud meant to trap some dissenters. This sort of thing will probably become more common - and more sophisticated.

The Left is bound to trumpet their momentary success as a proof that the GlobWarm skeptics are wrong.

Two possibilities. One is a bunch of smart grad students at MIT or Caltech. That's the innocent explanation, and we can all have a good laugh.

The other possibility is a very slick dirty trick from the Left.

It could be hard to distinguish between the two, since college students also tend to be Leftist True Believers. We will probably find out more in the coming days. The web allows a lot of back-tracing.

Which is being done at this point, BTW. If you don't believe this was intentional, you might want to look at this:

“We’re just the website design company,” said David Thorpe at Cyberium in Wales, listed as the administrator of the site. “I don’t know anything about the content. We were just asked to put the website up.”

Phone calls to the owner of the site, listed as being in Japan, went nowhere and e-mails have bounced back.

…So who is behind this? Any ideas?

This was up at Reuters a few hours ago. It probably took quite some time to get the story up over there. So the story was fed to the wire services. I would not be surprised if it AP reports it soon. I tried my best to get the word out on this, it was not enough.

I pwned this less than one half hour after opening the email - and it only took that long because I triple checked everything.

Again, for the search engine records: geoclimaticstudies.info is a FRAUD. Dr Hiroko Takebe of the Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. The study on the effect of benthic bacteria on global warming detailed in the "Journal of Geoclimatic Studies" is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Benthic Bacteria study + Global Warming is a FRAUD.

UPDATE: Thanks to American Thinker for the link. And thanks to the folks who followed the link. Please do take a look around.

And if you are a blogger you need to post these words for the search engines to fins. Seriously.

Again, for the search engine records: geoclimaticstudies.info is a FRAUD. Dr Hiroko Takebe of the Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. The study on the effect of benthic bacteria on global warming detailed in the "Journal of Geoclimatic Studies" is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Journal of Geoclimatic Studies is a FRAUD. Benthic Bacteria study + Global Warming is a FRAUD.

The Angry Voters

Chuck Todd from NBC News has an interesting analysis of Tuesday's election results. Interesting and disturbing, at least for politicians. Because what he is seeing is not the conventional wisdom that is being touted by many newspapers and pundits. What he thinks happened was a very, very angry electorate voted not to give more power to the government.

Ask yourself, how is it that a conservative and religious electorate in Utah said no to state government leaders who wanted to start a private school voucher program, while more liberal, secular voters in New Jersey struck down a proposal to expand stem cell research?

Or how is it that a left-of-center, usually pro-government electorate in Oregon said no to a cigarette tax increase to pay for expanded health care?

All of this happened during Tuesday’s off-year elections.

In fact, across the board it appears when presented with a choice to give government the power to start or transform a program, voters said no.

Down to defeat
On the surface, voters in Utah are generally supportive of private or religious schooling, voters in New Jersey are open to more stem cell research, and voters in Oregon want expanded health care coverage. What the three initiatives have in common is that opponents of the measures played on voters' distrust of government getting more involved. The result? All three went down to defeat.

General distrust of government is not a new phenomenon; it has been the fuel for electoral upheaval for decades. But it's important to note that there may be evidence of a much angrier and anxious electorate than either party is preparing for in 2008.

At our most recent briefing, one of the NBC/Wall Street Journal pollsters said “this is the most angry and unstable of an electorate as I’ve seen in my career.” And that’s from republican pollster Bill McInturff, who was around for 1992 and 1994, the last two times an angry electorate wreaked havoc in an election year.

What's also disturbing - or should be - is that off-year elections tend to attract relatively few voters and most of those are party faithful. So if conservative Utah and liberal states New Jersey and Oregon can't get programs approved that should have attracted the base to vote for them, there may be a bigger problem than either party is acknowledging.

I've been saying for quite some time now that Washington politicians have been setting up a near perfect throw the bums out scenario. Todd is apparently seeing exactly the same thing shaping up. When the voters are this mad at the politicians, surprising things happen. (I still also believe that the presidential candidates that also happen to be sitting members of Congress are going to have a real uphill fight - the voters are not in the mood to promote someone who is part of the problem.)

How About A Nice Game Of Dominoes?

Or if you're into something a little more active for recreation, how about Full Contact Chess?

Stripping The Light Scholastic

What's wrong with this picture: A teacher, warned by a parent that she had arranged a birthday surprise for her 16-year old, was expecting an interruption during drama class. That disruption, however, turned out to be a female stripper dressed as a police officer. The teacher only stepped in to stop things when the terpsichorean ecdysiast got down to her underwear and insisted the birthday boy rub lotion on her. The teacher did not intervene when a collar was fastened around the boy's neck and he was led around the room on a leash. The mother insists that she booked a guy in a gorilla suit, not the very un-PC fake PC.

"The teacher suddenly announced: 'Something is about to happen'.

Then a woman in a very short skirt walked in dressed as a copper.

"She asked the lad to stand up, which he did, and told him he had been a very naughty boy because he hadn't been doing his homework.

"Then she put on some Britney Spears music and got out a collar and lead from her bag and told him to put them on.

"No one could believe it. Next she ordered him to get on all fours, led him around the classroom and hit him 16 times - one for each year - on the bottom with her whip.

"Then she took off some clothes until she was down to her bra and pants, pulled out some cream, put it on her buttocks and told him to rub it in.

"To be fair to the teacher, you could tell she was just stunned - and when

the cream came out she told the stripper: 'That's it. That's enough'."

I'm really surprised the teacher let it even get to the leash part. Much less the whip. And the judgment of the stripper in question as well as the agency that sent her is, frankly, appalling. The school district is investigating.

Massive Tidal Surge Warning In Britain

A combination of strong storm activity coinciding with a very high tide is expected to send a nine-foot tidal surge roaring down the English Channel. British authorities are warning of "extreme danger to life and property".

A three-metre tidal surge is predicted to surge down the English Channel in the next 12 hours posing an "extreme danger to life and property", experts have warned.

Coupled with storms and high tides, the wave could leave swathes of the east coast under water, according to the Environment Agency.

A combination of gale force winds off the coast of Scotland and high tides are expected to cause floods which could breach sea defences.

Emergency crews are on high alert and authorities are spreading the word as quickly as possible. Conditions are said to be virtually identical to a similar event in 1953 which killed 300 people.

The Environment Agency spokesman likened the current conditions to those leading up to the floods of 1953. More than 300 people were killed when a surge from the North Sea flooded almost 100,000 hectares of eastern England.

"In 1953, there was a 3.2-metre surge and also high tides and a storm. It's comparable but we're much better prepared now," he said.

Nine severe weather warnings have been issued covering coastal areas from the north-east to Anglia.

If you live in Eastern Britain, pay attention to the warnings. This looks to be a potentially devastating event. (They have pictures from the 1953 surge at the link.)

Bearjacking In Jersey

A bear carjacked a minivan in New Jersey, taking the vehicle for a spin until he crashed it.

VERNON TOWNSHIP, N.J. — A black bear put his own spin on trick-or-treating when it broke into a van to get Halloween candy in Vernon.

Police believe the bear dislodged the parking brake, causing the manual transmission vehicle to roll about 40 feet down the street before stopping on a shoulder.

That's where a patrolman discovered candy wrappers in and outside the vehicle, along with paw prints, smudge marks, drool and black bear hair.

Well, it may have been a bear, anyway. But then why was this found at the scene?

just as well
i figure
everything happens for a reason
bearshert - as we say

and on we go

$16 Million Fraud Is Immaterial: Washington DC Official

I kid you not. A $16 million dollar embezzlement of Washington DC tax money, conducted by employees of the tax office over several years, is being called immaterial by the district's Chief Financial Officer, Natwar M. Gandhi:

Gandhi, who came to the news conference as a spectator but was questioned repeatedly by reporters, emphasized that the loss of $16 million is "immaterial" to the overall financial stability of the District. He called the scam's apparent success a "major management failure" at the tax office and said he would ask the Internal Revenue Service and D.C. inspector general to look into operations.

In all, authorities have arrested five people, two were employed in the Office of Tax and Revenue for Washington DC.

Two mid-level D.C. government employees used phony paperwork to collect more than $16 million from illegal tax refunds, avoiding detection for at least three years while issuing more than 40 checks cashed by friends and family members in on the scam, prosecutors said yesterday.

By day, Harriette Walters and Diane Gustus worked at the District's Office of Tax and Revenue. In their free time, prosecutors said, they worked with others to raid the city's treasury to stock up on luxury items including fancy cars, homes, furs, precious jewelry, designer handbags and clothing. Walters alone spent more than $1.4 million at Neiman Marcus, according to charging papers.

Authorities called it the largest theft ever uncovered in local government in the Washington area. Four top officials in the tax office resigned yesterday amid criticism that they did not spot what was going on. About $4 million of the money has been found, authorities said.

Walters, a 25-year D.C. employee, was a mid-level manager in charge of property tax refunds, with a salary of $81,000 a year. Gustus, a tax specialist, was paid about $55,000. Both were arrested yesterday and jailed overnight pending appearances today at U.S. District Court in Washington.

A bank employee raised questions this summer, refusing to cash a $410,000 refund check and triggering a federal investigation. Raids yesterday, conducted by at least 100 law enforcement officials, turned up a $160,000 Bentley in the garage of Walters's brother Richard Walters and designer purses and shoes bearing the labels of Chanel, Louis Vuitton and Hermes at Harriette Walters's home, law enforcement officials said. Authorities also found records tying Walters to the purchase of a $26,000 handbag, but the purse itself did not turn up.

Box loads of records also were carted from the D.C. tax office on North Capitol Street NE.

Three people close to Walters are charged with providing phony company accounts where the refund checks could be deposited — and laundered. They are her niece Jayrece Turnbull; Richard Walters; and Turnbull's friend Connie Alexander, all of Bowie. Richard Walters and Alexander were released on bond, and Turnbull is jailed pending a court hearing.

Gandhi has been spending vast sums of DC money to audit departments in the Government - and it took a suspicious bank teller to nail these people. No wonder he thinks it is "immaterial." He's ClueProof®. However, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard are happy to accept all the immaterial funds the district doesn't need. We could use new drapes.

Tax Policies To Benefit Democrat Donors

Well, I'm not sure if I believe this trend or not. Yesterday, the Washington Post exposed what sure looks like a  shakedown by Democrats - led by Chuck Schumer - trading opposition to closing a tax loophole for large donations. Today, the New York Times reports that another Democrat - Charles Rangel this time - appears to be legislating in favor of large donors.

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has proposed legislation that would effectively halt some current tax audits of people who get a tax break for living and operating a business in the United States Virgin Islands.

Many beneficiaries of the tax break are campaign contributors to the lawmaker, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, according to data collected by CQ MoneyLine, which tracks political contributions.

At least one of them, Richard G. Vento, is currently under audit, according to court filings. Mr. Vento gave $4,400 last year to the Baucus-Rangel Leadership Fund, which supports Mr. Rangel and Senator Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who heads the Senate Finance Committee.

Beneficiaries of the tax break including Michael W. Masters and Richard H. Driehaus, money managers, accounted for more than half the $51,900 that individuals in the Virgin Islands gave last year to Rangel for Congress, the chairman’s campaign organization. Mr. Rangel raised almost three times as much from such donors last year as in any other year in the MoneyLine database.

Mr. Rangel says his measure is simply an effort to address a discrepancy between the Internal Revenue Service’s treatment of Americans living in the Virgin Islands and its treatment of their mainland counterparts. Except in cases of fraud, the agency has three years to cite errors in a mainland resident’s tax payments. But since 2006, under I.R.S. rulings stemming from the agency’s efforts to crack down on abuse of the tax break, it has faced no such time limit in auditing Virgin Islands residents.

A discrepancy Rangel never noticed until it was painted a nice bright green with Virgin Islands cash, apparently. Remember all those promises to clean things up? Like I said yesterday, the Democrats are cleaning up alright. Just not exactly in the way they promised.

Piece Of History

There is a piece of history about to be auctioned in Fredericksburg, Texas on November 10th and 11th. In fact several pieces. As in historical pistols once belonging to Pancho Villa and Calamity Jane among others.

SAN ANTONIO - Item No. 1, for him: a Remington single-action revolver engraved with a scroll pattern and "Doreteo Arango" — Pancho Villa's real name.

Item No. 2, for her: a pocket pistol in a leather case that bears the name Martha Jane Cannary — the true identity of Calamity Jane.

Weapons that belonged to the Mexican revolutionary and the hard-living frontier scout were expected to be the stars of a weekend auction in Fredericksburg that includes about 1,000 Old West objects.

The barrel of Villa's revolver is marked "Chih_1914," around the time he became governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The gun was made about 40 years before that and was expected to fetch at least $30,000, auction managers said.

The Frontier Times Western Auctions website (the auction house is Randall Hill) says that a full catalog of pictures will be available today, but it is not as of this post. But if you're in Texas - or want to bid on a real piece of the Old West, here's your chance. More about Martha Jane Cannary-Burke, aka Calamity Jane at Wikipedia. She was somewhat colorful. Which is a nice way to say a big-time serial liar.

False Identification, False Security

110 people used false identification to obtain security clearances to work at Chicago's O'Hare airport. A raid there netted 23 illegal immigrants from Mexico.

The airport raid, which netted 23 undocumented workers from Mexico, showed that rigid new security protocols implemented in the six years since the terrorist attacks of September 11 are still not working.

The city's department of aviation is supposed to rigorously screen all employees granted access to secure areas like the tarmac and cargo areas.

That process is supposed to include fingerprinting, an FBI criminal check, and a security threat assessment.

But 110 employees of one contractor on site used social security numbers which either did not exist or belonged to other people, some of whom were dead, according to a criminal complaint.

One undocumented worker looking for work at the airport, who was actually a government informer, was told to look through a box with about 20 airport security badges and "pick one with a picture that most closely resembled his own likeness" the complaint said.

Feeling secure yet? This is why border security is a big deal. This is why illegal immigration is a big deal. The current euphemism being used for illegal immigrants is "undocumented workers". Only they aren't, are they? They are carrying stolen identities. The 23 illegals arrested in the raid (and the story actually calls them undocumented workers) face up to three years in jail and deportation. The People who hired them face up to 15.

Neither sentence is long enough.

Lose-Lose Situation For Hollywood, Writers

The Washington Post notes that the writer's strike is likely to do permanent damage to the entertainment industry. (Gee, where have I heard that before.) They point out that people are already turning to the internet.

After a mere three days, the strike against producers is already having an impact in living rooms and dens. With no writers to supply topical jokes, late-night talk shows were the first to go into reruns. Comedy Central says the audience for repeats of "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" is down a predictable 30 percent from the ratings for original episodes.

TV's most popular programs — prime-time, scripted dramas and sitcoms such as "Desperate Housewives," "House" and "Two and a Half Men" — remain safe for the near future, thanks to stockpiled scripts and episodes in the production pipeline. But if the strike extends into January and beyond, viewers might end up looking elsewhere for original entertainment, potentially giving Internet video producers the biggest traffic boost in their relatively short history.

Hundreds of short and cheaply produced video series populate the Web on sites that might not quite rank as household names — Blip.TV, Heavy.com, Metacafe, FunnyOrDie.com, among others. A few better-known names, such as the satirical Onion.com, have extended their text franchises into original video productions as well; the Onion produces a "Daily Show"-like TV news satire.

The problem the networks and writers are going to run into this time are that once people have turned away and found other sources of amusement, they won't go back. That is a losing scenario. It has happened before:

The last writers' strike, which lasted for five months in 1988, cost the networks an estimated $500 million in revenue. When it was over, viewing never returned to pre-strike levels — although it's difficult to determine whether those viewers disappeared because of the strike. That work stoppage came at a time when cable was starting to make significant inroads in urban and suburban households, and just after Nielsen Media Research had introduced its "people meters," which radically altered how TV audiences were measured.

Obviously, I think both sides in this are being stupid. The early indications are that they certainly were. Hmmm. Maybe I should start the Blue Crab Television Network. BCTV has a nice ring to it……

An Inconvenient Expert

John Coleman, the founder of The Weather Channel, tears into the myth of anthrpogenic global warming with a vengence over at ICECAP.

I do not oppose environmentalism. I do not oppose the political positions of either party. However, Global Warming, ie Climate Change, is not about environmentalism or politics. It is not a religion. It is not something you “believe in.” It is science; the science of meteorology. This is my field of life-long expertise. And I am telling you Global Warming is a non-event, a manufactured crisis and a total scam. I say this knowing you probably won’t believe a me, a mere TV weatherman, challenging a Nobel Prize, Academy Award and Emmy Award winning former Vice President of United States. So be it.

I have read dozens of scientific papers. I have talked with numerous scientists. I have studied. I have thought about it. I know I am correct. There is no run away climate change. The impact of humans on climate is not catastrophic. Our planet is not in peril. I am incensed by the incredible media glamour, the politically correct silliness and rude dismissal of counter arguments by the high priest of Global Warming.

In time, a decade or two, the outrageous scam will be obvious. As the temperature rises, polar ice cap melting, coastal flooding and super storm pattern all fail to occur as predicted everyone will come to realize we have been duped. The sky is not falling. And, natural cycles and drifts in climate are as much if not more responsible for any climate changes underway. I strongly believe that the next twenty years are equally as likely to see a cooling trend as they are to see a warming trend.

Of course, there is no telling how much real damage will have been done to the earth and to real people paying a real price because of the worship of a scam crisis. I have posted about the real damage being done in the name of saving the earth for some time now. There are dozens of such posts, links to reports of the devastation being done to the environment by unscrupulous and mendacious people, here and here. These are not manipulated science, these are reports of the eradication of orangutans, the clear cutting of rainforests, the subjugation of humans, the coming deaths by starvation - all done to "save the planet."

Someday, the people charging ahead and enforcing AGW myth as a driver for public policy will have to answer for what they have done. There will be a lot to answer for.