The Big Lie Jackass

Mark Finkelstein at Newsbusters with a little food for thought:

Let's review the liberal moral compass:

• Waterboarding a terrorist: an affront to our fundamental values.
• Subjecting an unborn child to partial-birth abortion: we celebrate a woman's right to choose!

It does not exactly help take the high moral ground when your "proof" of "torture" is a complete and utter lie. The jackass whining about how "waterboarding" made him feel in the AP video was not waterboarded - his face was protected from the water by a plastic shield.

Set up outside the Justice Department’s headquarters, Ebrahimzadeh struggled against his supposed interrogators as they yelled questions and forced him to lie on his back, a cloth over his face, his legs elevated. They poured two gallons of water over his face.

The process was supposed to resemble the process that CIA interrogators are believed to have used on terror detainees until a few years ago. However, Ebrahimzadeh’s interrogators put a plastic cage between his face and the cloth to make sure he did not inhale too much water and, potentially, drown or asphyxiate.

But in the video, Maboud goes on and on about how the vicious waterboarding made him feel. The choking. The lack of air to breath. The flat-out lies he spouts. Because it is all about feelings, isn't it? Jackass.

Think about this - seriously. Think.

Joe Lieberman And What’s Wrong With The Democrats

Before the 2000 election, I don't believe I had ever heard of Joe Lieberman. During that Presidential campaign, I can't say I was really impressed with him. In the long period after Al Gore withdrew his concession and turned the election into a circus, I came to dislike Lieberman - mostly by his association with the classless, mendacious Gore. Then I pretty much forgot about him.

Then the nutroots decided to spend a lot of time, energy and money trying to unseat the Democrat from Connecticut. I started to pay a little more attention to Joe Lieberman, what he said and what he stood for. I found that I rather liked what he was saying, his positions on many issues that I hold as central to the wellbeing of this nation. While still disagreeing with him - often - on other issues. But I found that Lieberman was an unusual Democrat these days.

He was sane and willing to put the good of the country above hyper-partisan politics. Which is, I'm quite sure, why the nutroots targeted him for personal destruction. In fact, he was an old school Democrat of the Truman/Kennedy mold. I was kind of distracted yesterday and did not post about his speech in Washington yesterday. Marc Moore over at the Van Der Galien Gazette noticed it today and posted about it. It is a fine, fine speech.

Since retaking Congress in November 2006, the top foreign policy priority of the Democratic Party has not been to expand the size of our military for the war on terror or to strengthen our democracy promotion efforts in the Middle East or to prevail in Afghanistan. It has been to pull our troops out of Iraq, to abandon the democratically-elected government there, and to hand a defeat to President Bush.

Iraq has become the singular litmus test for Democratic candidates. No Democratic presidential primary candidate today speaks of America’s moral or strategic responsibility to stand with the Iraqi people against the totalitarian forces of radical Islam, or of the consequences of handing a victory in Iraq to al Qaeda and Iran. And if they did, their campaign would be as unsuccessful as mine was in 2006. Even as evidence has mounted that General Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency strategy is succeeding, Democrats have remained emotionally invested in a narrative of defeat and retreat in Iraq, reluctant to acknowledge the progress we are now achieving, or even that that progress has enabled us to begin drawing down our troops there.

Part of the explanation for this, I think, comes back to ideology. For all of our efforts in the 1990s to rehabilitate a strong Democratic foreign policy tradition, anti-war sentiment remains the dominant galvanizing force among a significant segment of the Democratic base.

Read it all. These are the words of an old school Liberal - in the real sense of the word. Someone who believes in Liberty. Not the collectivist, Soviet-style "progressive" who believes in government as the answer to social problems - but the Liberal who believes in the government as the tool to be used in addressing social problems. There is a huge difference. I still will disagree with Joe Lieberman on many issues. But I rather suspect the disagreement would be more over methods than over ideology.

UPDATE: Anthony has a link to the entire speech given by Joe Lieberman. It is worth reading.

Well, Well, Well

Thanks to alert reader Cedric, we now have a confession form David Thorpe that he was , indeed, the person who intentionally put up the fraudulent GEOCLIMATICSTUDIES.INFO website, that he did so with the intent of trying to discredit people he disagrees with and one other very, very important thing for the media to remember.

He lies to reporters. Intentionally and directly to their faces.

It's been a busy time. I published a spoof website in an effort to smoke out some climate change sceptics - not genuine ones, but ones who are highly vocal and yet do not understand the science.

It consisted of a fake scientific journal, the Journal of Geoclimatic Studies, and a fake editorial and paper, aiming to 'prove' that global warming was caused by bacteria, not humans.

It launched Wed. night and achieved notoriety within hours. I was beseiged with calls from Science magazine, Nature and Reuters.

Several people were fooled but not for long as it was pretty easy to spot the spoof nature of it - all the names were made up.

From yesterday's Reuters story:

“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.”

He says someone else wrote the copy - but his brag on the linked post proves that he knew precisely what he was publishing and why. The one thing that (at least used to be) unforgivable by a reporter was to be intentionally lied to. Alister Doyle, the Reuters reporter should be furious right now.

The fraudulent website has been taken down by the hosting company (TOS violation?). James Lewis was precisely right in calling it a black ops job.

UPDATE: Many thanks for the kind words from Thomas Lifson over at American Thinker. And again, many thanks to alert reader Cedric who brought this to my attention. Visitors who followed the link over, thanks for stopping by. Please look around the site a little. (I knew I should have dusted….)

Wonder Why Camp Hillary Is Almost Frantic?

I pointed out earlier today that Hillary Clinton's campaign appeared to overreact to the waitress tipping story. I have also pointed out that the handling of the debate flap was not well done at all. Well, this may be why the campaign appears to be panicking - or the near panic may be causing this. It is sort of a chicken-egg type scenario….

Two new reputable polls of New Hampshire Democratic Primary voters will show statistically significant drops in support for frontrtunner Hillary Clinton, Democrats who have seen those polls said today.

The polls will be released this weekend and are embargoed; though I'm not privy to the embargo agreement, I'll be a little vague out of respect for the polling organizations.

One of the polls shows that the gap between Clinton and Barack Obama narrowed by more than 10 points. Her biggest decline was seen among older voters.

The other poll shows a 9 point drop. These are significant shifts and cause for real concern. Something isn't working right for team Hillary.

Who Needs Flaming Lips…..

….When you have blazing bison heads?

Police say they arrested Ryann Jean Stafford, 26, of Meridian, Thursday on a charge of third-degree arson, a felony.

Investigators say Stafford and her former spouse got into an argument at his home early Thursday. But after he left the house, police say Stafford began throwing objects and then used a lighter to ignite the mounted head.

Another person who lives at the home extinguished the fire.

I suspect we may be looking at some anger management issues here. But who knew that bison are capable of self-barbecue? And for no other reason than I used the band's name, sort of, in the post title, here they are:

Reacting With Dismay

The Associated Press is reporting that rank and file Democrats are expressing their dismay over the Democratic leadership's latest attempt to force a withdrawal from Iraq. That, I suspect, spells trouble for Pelosi. The reason why they are dismayed is important here:

WASHINGTON - Rank-and-file Democrats expressed dismay on Friday over their party's latest anti-war strategy, with some members reluctant to vote around Veterans Day to bring troops home.

The House was on track to consider legislation next week that would give President Bush $50 billion for operations for Iraq and Afghanistan, but insist that he begin withdrawing troops.

The measure identifies a goal of ending combat by December 2008, leaving only enough soldiers and Marines behind to fight terrorists, train Iraqi security forces and protect U.S. assets.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed off plans for a Friday vote after caucus members told her late Thursday they weren't sure they would support it. Liberal Democrats said the proposal was too soft, while conservative members told Pelosi they thought it went too far.

"I think the message in the next week ought to be that a heck of a lot of people have been harmed (in combat) and we ought to take care of them," said Rep. Gene Taylor, a conservative Mississippi Democrat who says his constituents mostly support the war.

The reason the vote was delayed is also important - they did not have the votes to pass it. But there's more:

Pelosi, D-Calif., told members in a private caucus meeting on Thursday that if Bush rejected the measure, she did not intend on sending him another war spending bill for the rest of the year.

That is a recipe for disaster for the Democrats. If the troops on the ground run out of vital supplies because the House will not provide funds all hell is going to bust loose, politically speaking. Bet on it. The Democrats who withhold the funds will find out really quickly just how fast polls can shift. They will not like the direction the shift takes. The conservative Democrats from conservative districts and the so-called Blue Dogs will have serious problems almost instantly.

The Last Supper DJ?

We've had a couple of items about the Last Supper, the iconic Leonardo Da Vinci painting, in the past few months. First it was the researcher who claimed that superimposing a reversed image on top of the original yielded some hints about - well - something. Maybe a Holy Grail, maybe a Holy Baby or maybe some Knights Templar. Or something.

Then came the news that amateurs and experts alike could very a super high resolution image of the original painting. The idea there is to improve access to the painting for research and to save wear and tear on a very fragile work of art.

Earlier, we also had a story about a famous chapel in Britain (featured prominently in The Da Vinci Code) and the efforts of a father and son team to decipher the musical code they believed they had found in the decorative stonework. The Rosslyn Motet debuted in May of this year.

Well, someone is now claiming to have deciphered music in the placement of the bread and hands in the painting of The Last Supper.

"It sounds like a requiem," Giovanni Maria Pala said. "It's like a soundtrack that emphasizes the passion of Jesus."

Painted from 1494 to 1498 in Milan's Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, the "Last Supper" vividly depicts a key moment in the Gospel narrative: Jesus' last meal with the 12 Apostles before his arrest and crucifixion, and the shock of Christ's followers as they learn that one of them is about to betray him.

Pala, a 45-year-old musician who lives near the southern Italian city of Lecce, began studying Leonardo's painting in 2003, after hearing on a news program that researchers believed the artist and inventor had hidden a musical composition in the work.

"Afterward, I didn't hear anything more about it," he said in an interview with The Associated Press. "As a musician, I wanted to dig deeper."

In a book released Friday in Italy, Pala explains how he took elements of the painting that have symbolic value in Christian theology and interpreted them as musical clues.

Pala first saw that by drawing the five lines of a musical staff across the painting, the loaves of bread on the table as well as the hands of Jesus and the Apostles could each represent a musical note.

This fit the relation in Christian symbolism between the bread, representing the body of Christ, and the hands, which are used to bless the food, he said. But the notes made no sense musically until Pala realized that the score had to be read from right to left, following Leonardo's particular writing style.

In his book - "La Musica Celata" ("The Hidden Music") - Pala also describes how he found what he says are other clues in the painting that reveal the slow rhythm of the composition and the duration of each note.

The result is a 40-second "hymn to God" that Pala said sounds best on a pipe organ, the instrument most commonly used in Leonardo's time for spiritual music.

Unfortunately, Pala's website does not appear to have a sample of the music. Or maybe it does and we can't find it. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard, not to be outdone, decided to decipher the double-reverse image of The Last Supper, play the resultant music on the Crabitat's Wurlitzer (the small one) then play the recording backward.

It said, "Paul is dead." We're not sure what that means.

The Night Of Broken Glass

At 9:30 A.M. the bell at the main gate rang persistently. I opened the door: about 50 men stormed into the house, many of them with their coat- or jacket-collars turned up. At first they rushed into the dining room, which fortunately was empty, and there they began their work of destruction, which was carried out with the utmost precision. The frightened and fearful cries of the children resounded through the building. In a stentorian voice I shouted: "Children, go out into the street immediately!" This advice was certainly contrary to the orders of the Gestapo. I thought, however, that in the street, in a public place, we might be in less danger than inside the house. The children immediately ran down a small staircase at the back, most of them without hat or coat – despite the cold and wet weather. We tried to reach the next street crossing, which was close to Dinslaken’s Town Hall, where I intended to ask for police protection. About ten policemen were stationed here, reason enough for a sensation-seeking mob to await the next development. This was not very long in coming; the senior police officer, Freihahn, shouted at us: "Jews do not get protection from us! Vacate the area together with your children as quickly as possible!" Freihahn then chased us back to a side street in the direction of the backyard of the orphanage. As I was unable to hand over the key of the back gate, the policeman drew his bayonet and forced open the door. I then said to Freihahn: "The best thing is to kill me and the children, then our ordeal will be over quickly!" The officer responded to my "suggestion" merely with cynical laughter. Freihahn then drove all of us to the wet lawn of the orphanage garden. He gave us strict orders not to leave the place under any circumstances.

Facing the back of the building, we were able to watch how everything in the house was being systematically destroyed under the supervision of the men of law and order – the police. At short intervals we could hear the crunching of glass or the hammering against wood as windows and doors were broken. Books, chairs, beds, tables, linen, chests, parts of a piano, a radiogram, and maps were thrown through apertures in the wall, which a short while ago had been windows or doors.

In the meantime the mob standing around the building had grown to several hundred. Among these people I recognized some familiar faces, suppliers of the orphanage or tradespeople, who only a day or a week earlier had been happy to deal with us as customers. This time they were passive, watching the destruction without much emotion.

Y.S. Herz, "Kristallnacht at the Dinslaken Orphanage," Yad Vashem Studies, XI, 1976, pp. 345-349

On November 9th and 10th, 1938, Nazi youths and SA toughs ran riot through Jewish areas all over Germany. In all 1,350 Jewish synagogues were destroyed or burnt, more than 90 Jews were murdered, more than 30,000 more were sent to concentration camps and more than 7,000 Jewish businesses were looted and destroyed. Untold numbers of Jewish homes were also looted. Later, Jews were presented the bill for the destruction.

Things got much worse.

Never forget. Never again.

It’s A (Small) Man’s World

Or it sure is when you're the tallest man in the United States. Deputy George Bell, from Virginia, is 7 feet, 8 inches tall. The folks at the Guinness Book of World Records will duly note that fact in the next edition. Bell is comfortable with his height - but he does have to deal with a world that isn't exactly made for him.

"I have no choice but to like it," Bell, 50, said in an interview with The Associated Press as he paced the sidelines of a Pee Wee football game at a city park, where he was providing security.

"I'm used to a small man's world," he added in a deep voice that suits his stature. "I've been dealing with a small man's world since I was a kid."

That is one big guy. (Photo and some physical information at the link.) I don't imagine he has a lot of trouble with suspects misbehaving on him, either.

2007 Weblog Awards Announced

The winners of the 2007 Weblog Awards have been announced. Congratulations to all the winners. A special shout out to Best New Blog Jammie Wearing Fool.

Project Valour-IT Needs Your Help

Project Valour-IT provides voice-activated laptop computers to wounded or disabled troops. It is a non-profit, volunteer effort - and they need your help. There is a donation button on the sidebar, right at the very top. This site is on the Army team (the other teams being Navy, Marines and Air Force) - which is done strictly to give the effort a friendly competition aspect. It does not matter to which "branch" you donate, all the money goes to the same worthy cause.

Please consider making a donation.

The Vegetables Will Have The Beef

Peggy Noonan opens her column this week with an almost certainly apocryphal story about Margaret Thatcher:

The story as I was told it is that in the early years of her prime ministership, Margaret Thatcher held a meeting with her aides and staff, all of whom were dominated by her, even awed. When it was over she invited her cabinet chiefs to join her at dinner in a nearby restaurant. They went, arrayed themselves around the table, jockeyed for her attention. A young waiter came and asked if they'd like to hear the specials. Mrs. Thatcher said, "I will have beef."

Yes, said the waiter. "And the vegetables?"

"They will have beef too."

Too good to check, as they say. It is certainly apocryphal, but I don't want it to be. It captured her singular leadership style, which might be characterized as "unafraid."

She was a leader.

Noonan then goes on to take a look at how the Clinton campaign - and the candidate herself - handled the small problem she had in the last Democratic debate. It is not a flattering analysis.

When Hillary Clinton suggested that debate criticism of her came under the heading of men bullying a defenseless lass, an interesting thing happened. First Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL and an Edwards supporter, hit her hard. "When unchallenged, in a comfortable, controlled situation, Sen. Clinton embraces her elevation into the 'boys club.' " But when "legitimate questions" are asked, "she is quick to raise the white flag and look for a change in the rules."

Then Mrs. Clinton changed tack a little and told a group of women in West Burlington, Iowa, that they were going to clean up Washington together: "Bring your vacuum cleaners, bring your brushes, bring your brooms, bring your mops." It was all so incongruous–can anyone imagine the 20th century New Class professional Hillary Clinton picking up a vacuum cleaner? Isn't that what downtrodden pink collar workers abused by the patriarchy are for?

But even better, and more startling, people began to giggle. At Mrs. Clinton, a woman who has never inspired much mirth. Suddenly they were remembering the different accents she has spoken with when in different parts of the country, and the weird laugh she has used on talk shows. A few days ago new poll numbers came out–neck and neck with Barack Obama in Iowa, her lead slipping in New Hampshire. There is a sense that Sen. Obama is rising, a sense for the first time in this election cycle that Mrs. Clinton just may be in a fight, a real one, one she could actually lose.

It's all kind of wonderful, isn't it? Someone indulged in special pleading and America didn't buy it. It's as if the country this week made it official: We now formally declare that the woman who uses the fact of her sex to manipulate circumstances is a jerk.

This is a victory for true feminism, in its old-fashioned sense of a simple assertion of the equality of men and women. We might not have so resoundingly reached this moment without Mrs. Clinton's actions and statements. Thank you, Mrs. Clinton.

The real question is: could Hillary Clinton even figure out how to switch on a vacuum cleaner? I have marveled before at how badly the Clinton campaign handled the debate matter. They are doing much the same thing - overreacting and looking more than a bit foolish - over the waitress in Iowa (previous post). There has been a definite projection by the media of Hillary as 'inevitable'. But things like this make one wonder. Noonan makes one other observation that bears examination.

A word on toughness. Mrs. Clinton is certainly tough, to the point of hard. But toughness should have a purpose.

To an engineer, the words 'toughness' and 'hardness' have distinct meanings. A material can be quite hard yet be very, very brittle, fracturing easily under a small stress. It is beginning to look like there is a certain amount of brittleness in the Clinton campaign.

Tippity Tappity Tip

I thought this was another one of those silly gotcha stories that become more and more frequent as the campaign season progresses. But I'm beginning to wonder. Yesterday NPR ran a story that mentioned that Hillary Clinton's campaign had failed to leave a waitress a tip at an Iowa restaurant. Today they run a clarification that does little to clear the issue up.

Not so the reference to Hillary Clinton and the tip. As soon as that story aired in the 5 o'clock hour Eastern Time, it was picked up by a number of political blogs. And the Clinton campaign immediately contacted news organizations to tell its side of the story. Clinton spokesman Phil Singer wrote to NPR in an e-mail: "The campaign spent $157 and left a $100 tip at the Maid-Rite Restaurant. Wish you had checked in with us beforehand."

Esterday said "nobody got tipped that day," and NPR should have checked with the Clinton campaign before the story aired to see if any tip was left and how it was done. We regret that this was not done. On Thursday, Esterday was sticking by her story.

"Why would I lie about not getting a tip?" she told NPR. She also maintained that her co-workers at the restaurant had not received tips.

A Clinton campaign staffer called on Esterday at the restaurant Thursday after the story aired. The staff member apologized to her and gave her a $20 bill, according to Esterday. The Clinton campaign confirmed that visit. The campaign also produced photocopies of receipts showing $157.46 was paid to Maid-Rite on a VISA card on Oct. 8 for meals consumed by the candidate's entourage. The tip was supposed to have been paid in cash, and the campaign insisted such a payment was made but has declined to make available a staff member who was present at Maid-Rite and left tip money.

The actual tip issue is kind of moot at this point. What is not is the almost frantic spin control mode that the Clinton campaign went into. They immediately went on the all-out offense on this, going so far as to set up a website specifically to "debunk" the story. Fine, fast reaction in today's political environment is not a bad thing. Unless of course you're trying to browbeat a waitress from Iowa:

Esterday, speaking to NPR from home later Thursday, said the Clinton campaign staffer who visited the diner apologized to her and said a $100 tip was left on a credit card the day of Clinton's visit. Esterday said the staff member said the money was meant to be shared.

"I explained to her that our credit card machine, you know, doesn't add on the tip," Esterday said. "And she said, 'Well, then, they left a $100 bill there.' And I said, 'Well, it didn't get divided up amongst us, because I had gotten nothing.'

"She just said, 'Well, there was one left,'" Esterday said. "She just kept repeating, 'There was one left.'

This is one of those times when the old Shakespeare quote, "The lady doth protest too much, methinks," in its original context applies.

By "protest," Gertrude doesn't mean "object" or "deny"—these meanings postdate Hamlet. The principal meaning of "protest" in Shakespeare's day was "vow" or "declare solemnly," a meaning preserved in our use of "protestation." When we smugly declare that "the lady doth protest too much," we almost always mean that the lady objects so much as to lose credibility.

Rove Evaluates Congressional Democrats

In an op-ed in the Opinion Journal that will surely bring howls of outrage, Karl Rove systematically evaluates the accomplishments of the Democratic leadership in Congress. Well, actually 'accomplishments' in this context is not exactly a compliment.

Democrats promised "civility and bipartisanship." Instead, they stiff-armed their Republican colleagues, refused to include them in budget negotiations between the two houses, and have launched more than 400 investigations and made more than 675 requests for documents, interviews or testimony. They refused a bipartisan compromise on an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, instead wasting precious time sending the president a bill they knew he would veto. And they did this knowing that they wouldn't be able to override that veto. Why? Because their pollsters told them putting the children's health-care program at risk would score political points. Instead, it left them looking cynical.

The list of Congress's failures grows each month. No energy bill. No action on health care. No action on the mortgage crisis. No immigration reform. No progress on renewing No Child Left Behind. Precious little action on judges and not enough on reducing trade barriers. Congress has not done its work. And these failures will have consequences.

Democrats had a moment after the 2006 election, but now that moment has passed. They've squandered it. They have demonstrated both the inability and unwillingness to govern. Instead, after more than a decade in the congressional minority, they reflexively look for short-term partisan advantage and attempt to appease the party's most strident fringe. Now that Democrats have the reins of congressional power, their true colors are coming out and the public doesn't like what it sees.

The Democratic victory in 2006 was narrow. They won the House by 85,961 votes out of over 80 million cast and the Senate by a mere 3,562 out of over 62 million cast. A party that wins control by that narrow margin can quickly see its fortunes reversed when it fails to act responsibly, fails to fulfill its promises, and fails to lead.

The voters are increasingly angry at the Congress and its negative accomplishments. That is a dangerous situation for the party in power - especially since the Democratic leadership just blindly continues their negative, highly partisan tactics. The Left has spent years demonizing Karl Rove, but they have done so because of his knack for analyzing the voting public. The Democrats won't listen to Rove, fortunately. But I think he's got this one nailed exactly.

Britain Gets Lucky

The flooding that authorities had been warning about in Eastern Britain did not materialize. Although the tidal surge was very close to the feared maximum of three meters, the coastal flood defenses held in most areas. Only some minor flooding is reported in Great Yarmouth.

Tides looked higher than usual and provided surfers with dramatic conditions, but flood defences held in most places.

Norfolk Police reported that water did breach the flood defences in the centre of Great Yarmouth, but they said: "At this time the flooding does not present a risk to persons or property."

An Environment Agency (EA) spokesman said: "The levels are lower than we originally predicted but only by about 30cm or so.

"There's still a risk of flooding around the coast."

They got lucky. These exact conditions have caused great loss of life and property through the years.