Blue Crab Boulevard

Historical evidence has emerged that Viking women dressed like…..

Madonna!

A runway fashion show in Viking times would have spotlighted women cloaked in imported colored-silk gowns adorned with metallic breast coverings and long trains.

This surprising claim is the result of a new analysis of remnants from a woman's wardrobe discovered in a grave dating back to the 10th century in Russia, painting a picture of Viking panache before Christianity was established that runs counter to previous ideas about buttoned-up, prudish looking Norsewomen.

"Now we can say the pre-Christian dress code was very rich," textiles researcher Annika Larsson of Uppsala University in Sweden told LiveScience. "When Christianity came, the dress was more like that of nuns. There was a big difference."

The fashion findings go beyond apparel, revealing that the Viking Age from 750 A.D. to 1050 A.D. was not uniform and might even have been sort of sexy. (The findings here apply to the Swedish Vikings, who mostly traveled east into modern-day Russia and further on to Byzantium and beyond, rather than the Danish/Norwegian Vikings who went westward).

"Textile research can tell us more about the state of society than research into traditions. Old rituals can live on long after society has changed, but when trade routes are cut off, there's an immediate impact on clothing fashions," Larsson said.

Larsson discovered a blue silk dress and associated ornaments in a grave in the Russian region of Pskov, close to Novgorod and the eastern trade routes then plied by Vikings from Sweden. She said the dress was positioned in the grave as a gift likely to be worn in an afterlife.

Devil with a blue dress, blue dress on? One wonders why the Vikings would leave on raids, but we digress. Offhand, if the find by Larrson is a single data point, it may be an aberration rather than a real historical finding. So it is probably a bit silly to say this single find overturns all the other evidence. 

On the other hand, Aurthur Rackham wasn't far off if this is correct.  

Sad because one of my go-to blogs will not be around much longer. Happy because the voice behind that blog is not falling silent, merely changing locations. Ed Morrisey, skipper of Captain's Quarters will be closing up shop at the old address. But fear not, he will be hanging out his shingle over at Hot Air.

Hot Air is proud to welcome blogger extraordinaire Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters to the staff. He’ll start cross-posting here today and we’re opening up comment registration to help bring CQ members into the fold. (Go here to register.) In the next few weeks, Ed will close down CQ and make Hot Air his exclusive home. (Update: Ed’s Hot Air e-mail address is ed@hotair.com)

Ed began blogging at Captain’s Quarters in 2003. During the past five years, his work has been published in the Washington Post, New York Post, New York Times, Weekly Standard, and other national publications. In 2007, Ed made the leap to full-time employment in New Media when he became political director for Blog Talk Radio. You can see all of his past work in the archives at Captain’s Quarters.

Ed has lived in Minnesota for more than ten years after leaving his native California. He and his wife have a son and daughter-in-law finishing their college education and a beautiful five-year-old granddaughter. He has a weekly radio show on Minnesota’s AM 1280 The Patriot every Saturday afternoon.

Ed has been a friend and kindred spirit since I entered the blogosphere. He brings keen political insights, boundless energy and optimism, and invaluable investigative skills/enterprise reporting to the team. His pioneering citizen journalism helped expose government corruption in Canada and brought down a rotten Canadian Liberal Party administration. He’s been the subject of moonbat cartoonist Ted Rall’s class bigotry and a target of Vanity Fair jerk James Wolcott’s snobbery. Ever the gentleman, Ed joked in response: “Success is when all the right people hate you.”

They have opened registration over at Hot Air for commenters so Ed's loyal flock of readers (and he has a lot) can continue to comment on Ed's posts. I've sent Ed an email offering my personal congratulations. Consider doing the same.

Ed is one of the first bloggers I began reading back when I found the blogosphere. He will be a great addition to Hot Air. Congratulations, Ed, may the seas be calm and the winds fair.  

Lorne Gunter at the National Post writes about the current brutally cold winter much of the northern hemisphere is experiencing. He points to many experts who do not subscribe to the "consensus" of anthropogenic global warming as well as reeling off some amazing facts about the harsh weather. Some of this will not be new information for regular readers here, but quite a lot is.

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back.

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

It is instructive to look at the Cryosphere Today's website and compare the extent of yesterday's arctic ice to the extent last year. Especially notable is the increase in ice on the west coast of Greenland and the area near Alaska. I'd suggest reading the whole article, which has some new information about major errors of omission in the climate models. It seems they forgot to take into account the impact on wind on the circulation of ocean currents. When those effects are taken into account, the models give completely different results.

John Fund notes that the true believers are redoubling their efforts to stifle dissenters.  

John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all promise bold action on climate change . All have endorsed a form of cap-and-trade system that would severely limit future carbon emissions. The Democratic Congress is champing at the bit to act. So too is the Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of companies led by General Electric and Duke Energy.

You'd think this would be a rich time for debate on the issue of climate change. But it's precisely as sweeping change on climate policy is becoming likely that many people have decided the time for debate is over. One writer puts climate change skeptics "in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial," another envisions "war crimes trials" for the deniers. And during the tour for his film "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore himself belittled "global warming deniers" as unworthy of any attention.

Take the reaction to Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg's latest book, "Cool It," which calls for a reasoned debate on global warming. Mr. Lomborg himself leans left, and he opens his book by declaring his belief that "humanity has caused a substantial rise in atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels over the past centuries, thereby contributing to global warming." But he has infuriated environmentalists by saying it is necessary to debate "whether hysterical and head-long spending on extravagant CO2-cutting programs at an unprecedented price is the only possible response." To do so, he says, it will be necessary to cool the doomsday rhetoric, allowing a measured discussion about the best ways forward. "Being smart about our future is the reason we have done so well in the past. We should not abandon our smarts now."

Mr. Lomborg's solution is to avoid discredited cap-and-trade programs, in which developing nations limit economic growth while they fruitlessly try to convince booming economies such as India and China to do the same. His alternative: "Let's focus on research and development. Let's focus on noncarbon-emitting technologies like solar, wind, carbon capture, energy efficiency and also, let's realize the solution may come from nuclear fission and fusion." He laments that the climate change issue has been demagogued by ideological groups on both sides, "and the ones who are making panicky or catastrophic claims simply have better press." At the end of the day, he ruefully acknowledges that potential progress and the sorts of solutions he advocates "are just boring things."

Now you know why they are trying to silence critics. 

UPDATE: Rich Horton notes a very carefully worded story about advancing glaciers in Antarctica. Rapidly advancing. Melting glaciers recede - these are moving briskly in the opposite direction.

The Washington Post names Barack Obama's top five flip-flops on his trip through the primaries. The list is impressive:

1. Special interests In January, the Obama campaign described union contributions to the campaigns of Clinton and John Edwards as "special interest" money. Obama changed his tune as he began gathering his own union endorsements. He now refers respectfully to unions as the representatives of "working people" and says he is "thrilled" by their support.

2. Public financing Obama replied "yes" in September 2007 when asked if he would agree to public financing of the presidential election if his GOP opponent did the same. Obama has now attached several conditions to such an agreement, including regulating spending by outside groups. His spokesman says the candidate never committed himself on the matter.

3. The Cuba embargo In January 2004, Obama said it was time "to end the embargo with Cuba" because it had "utterly failed in the effort to overthrow Castro." Speaking to a Cuban American audience in Miami in August 2007, he said he would not "take off the embargo" as president because it is "an important inducement for change." 

The rest of the list is at the link, as are the top ten Hillary Clinton flipperoos. (She's been doing this longer than Obama, so there's more history.) I think the first Obama flip-flop, especially reinforces my earlier comment that Barack Obama is a stone opportunist . He will make a rapid about-face on some pretty strongly stated points if it benefits him. It's not easy being everything to everyone all the time, is it?

The inhabitants of Anchorage, Alaska appear to have entirely too much time on their hands. They've taken to playing with their food in a big way. But the reindeer won the first annual Running of the Reindeer handily.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - From sausages to stews, reindeer are usually a main dish in Alaska.

But the antlered animals were the main event at Anchorage's first annual running of the reindeer.

A cheering crowd of hundreds lined snow-packed Fourth Avenue Sunday to watch what was touted as Alaska's version of Spain's famed running of the bulls.

"Normally we just eat them," said Mark Berg, a spectator who has lived in Alaska since 1967. "I just made some jambalaya the other day out of reindeer sausage. I've eaten more of their cousins than they want to know."

Seven little reindeer, looking a bit bewildered, stood next to their handlers as a crowd of roughly 1,000 costumed runners chatted excitedly at the start.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are pretty sure that Pamplona has nothing to worry about. The costumed runners were apparently slowed down by their carrot and lichen attire, allowing the reindeer to win the race outright. Either that or the sight of giant abulatory plant life gave the reindeer's hooves wings.

We'd run like heck if we saw that. 

I have not bothered to comment on that picture of Barack Obama wearing the garb of a Somali elder that was circulated over the weekend. I'm glad I didn't since Drudge is now reporting that the picture was circulated by Clinton staffers in what appears to be a really nasty - and completely ineffective - smear attempt.

With a week to go until the Texas and Ohio primaries, stressed Clinton staffers circulated a photo over the weekend of a "dressed" Barack Obama.

The photo, taken in 2006, shows the Democrat frontrunner fitted as a Somali Elder, during his visit to Wajir, a rural area in northeastern Kenya.

The senator was on a five-country tour of Africa.

"Wouldn't we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were HRC?" questioned one campaign staffer, in an email obtained by the DRUDGE REPORT.

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe on the circulation of the Obama/Somali photo: "On the very day that Senator Clinton is giving a speech about restoring respect for America in the world, her campaign has engaged in the most shameful, offensive fear-mongering we've seen from either party in this election. This is part of a disturbing pattern that led her county chairs to resign in Iowa, her campaign chairman to resign in New Hampshire, and it's exactly the kind of divisive politics that turns away Americans of all parties and diminishes respect for America in the world." 

Politicians have a long history of dressing up in local garb for a photo opportunity. Obama is no different. But the sheer sleaze factor of where this picture appears to have come from should make people wonder. How much of the vast conspiracy that Hillary Clinton complains about traces back to her own operatives?

Incidentally, I agree with Rick Moran's take on the whole picture incident.

I receive these kinds of comments all the time and read them constantly on other blogs. What the commenter and other conservatives don’t take into account about Obama is that he is much more of a calculating man than anyone generally gives him credit for. He attends a church in Chicago whose pastor is admiring of black racist Louis Farrakahn. But I doubt whether Obama’s Christianity goes much deeper than his devotion to Islam – which is to say his religiosity is a calculated element of his political personae. His attendance at Trinity United Church Of Christ in Chicago establishes his authenticity as an African American more than fulfilling any spiritual need the candidate may have.

And that’s why I find charges that Obama is some kind of closet Muslim so absurd. The candidate may have been trained as a grass roots organizer using the playbook written by radical Saul Alinsky. And he may have been involved in radical lefist politics early in his career. But a man who has so carefully crafted a political resume by conveniently being absent for key votes or voting “Present” on controversial bills – all the better to obscure how far left his politics go or what his true politics are – it is not beyond imagining that whatever his religious beliefs, they are calculated to effortlessly merge with the rest of this image Obama is presenting to the world. There is no room for Islam in this image nor is there anything in the public record that would indicate Obama has even given his Muslim heritage – if indeed his father was a member of the Islamic faith – a second thought as an adult.

Obama is nothing more than a gifted politician. In other words, he is a stone opportunist with a carefully-crafted, beautifully-engineered image. Nothing more. 

Is this the final backfire of the Clinton campaign? At this point, all one can do is hope. 

UPDATE: Commenter Neo sent this along in comments. Erm, Bubba looks even more ridiculous in that getup.

William Kristol points out that the creepy, cult-like quality of the Obama campaign that many people have commented on recently has a central theme. It is really all about Barack Obama.

But that clearly isn’t what she was talking about. For as she had argued in the Wisconsin speech, America’s illness goes far beyond a flawed political process: “Barack knows that at some level there’s a hole in our souls.” This was a variation of language she had used earlier on the campaign trail: “Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems, we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation.”

But they can be repaired. Indeed, she had said a couple of weeks before, in Los Angeles: “Barack Obama … is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

So we don’t have to work to improve our souls. Our broken souls can be fixed — by our voting for Barack Obama. We don’t have to fight or sacrifice to help our country. Our uninvolved and uninformed lives can be changed — by our choosing Barack Obama. America can become a nation to be proud of — by letting ourselves be led by Barack Obama.

John Kennedy, to whom Obama is sometimes compared, challenged the American people to acts of citizenship and patriotism. Barack Obama allows us to feel better about ourselves.

Obama likes to say, “we are the change that we seek” and “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Obama’s rhetorical skill makes his candidacy appear almost collective rather than individual. That’s a democratic courtesy on his part, and one flattering to his followers. But the effectual truth of what Obama is saying is that he is the one we’ve been waiting for.

Barack Obama is an awfully talented politician. But could the American people, by November, decide that for all his impressive qualities, Obama tends too much toward the preening self-regard of Bill Clinton, the patronizing elitism of Al Gore and the haughty liberalism of John Kerry? 

Two songs come to mind here. Neil Diamond's Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show and Everclear's Everything to Everyone. The repeated references to how Obama will save our very souls is, frankly, offensive. And Kristol is quite correct: it is about Obama's ego - he is the one he has been waiting for.

This is nothing particularly unusual for a politician, it just seems to be taken up to the next level by Obama. At some point, his clay feet will become apparent. When the tent revival hysteria dies down, people will see a politician trying to be everything to everyone - an impossible task.  

Robert Novak wonders who will be able to get through to Hillary Clinton that her campaign is over. The band has packed up and left the building, but she keeps right on dancing - and there doesn't appear to be anyone in the Democratic party who is going to be able to explain that to her. Nobody is brave enough to bell this particular cat.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Even before Sen. Barack Obama won his ninth-straight contest against Sen. Hillary Clinton in Wisconsin last Tuesday, wise old heads in the Democratic Party were asking this question: Who will tell her that it's over, that she cannot win the presidential nomination and the sooner she leaves the race the more it will improve chances of defeating Sen. John McCain in November?

In an ideal though unattainable world, Clinton would have dropped out when it became clear even before Wisconsin that she could not be nominated. The nightmare scenario was that she would win in Wisconsin, claiming a "comeback" that would propel her to narrow victories in Texas and Ohio March 4. That still would not cut her a path to the nomination. Telling her then to end her candidacy and avoid a bloody battle stretching to the party's Denver national convention might not be achievable.

The Democratic dilemma recalls the Republican problem, in a much different context, 34 years ago, when GOP graybeards asked: "Who will bell the cat?" — go to Richard M. Nixon and inform him he had lost his support in the party and must resign the presidency. Sen. Barry Goldwater successfully performed that mission in 1974, but there is no Goldwater facsimile in today's Democratic Party (except for Sen. Ted Kennedy, who could not do it because he has endorsed Obama).  

Novak reports that many Democratic operatives are secretly hoping that Clinton loses both Texas and Ohio by large enough margins that it will be unnecessary to bell her. At this point, it is very close to being mathematically impossible for her to win it unless Obama stumbles in a really big way.

Hoping for a miracle isn't a notably successful campaign strategy.  

Stuart Rothenberg, who knows rather a lot about how politics works and has been observing it for years, points out the irreconcilable differences that Barack Obama has - with himself. They really are irreconcilable, too.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) continues to promise change and stress his ability to unite Americans. It’s a feel-good campaign built on soaring rhetoric and good intentions.

Pardon me if all of the fawning from the national media, and the endorsements from Caroline Kennedy and Garrison Keillor, leave me less than convinced that he can bridge the deep divide that separates Americans.

Withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq won’t bring Americans together. Nor will raising taxes on the affluent or enhancing the power of organized labor to recruit more members. Even a stem-cell research bill won’t bring Americans together, though a clear majority surely supports it.

In politics, the devil is always in the details, and except in rare cases, Obama has either avoided them or, more importantly, failed to note the obvious contradictions in his message and his record….

….If Obama satisfies Kennedy and the Democratic Party’s most liberal constituencies, it’s unlikely that he is going to bring the country together. And if Obama does truly take steps to find a middle ground between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, he certainly will disappoint his party’s base.

The reality is that half of the country leans Democratic and half leans Republican. Yes, there are some issues on which many Americans agree, but if Obama limits himself to those, he’ll have a thin agenda.

Instead, Obama is likely to strike out in a different direction from Bush. And if he thinks his communication skills alone will bring along the whole country (as he seems to), he is deluding himself. America is divided because Americans have very different views.

Obama was rated the most liberal Member of the U.S. Senate in 2007, up from the 10th most liberal Member in 2006 and the 16th most liberal in 2005. That suggests that he will follow a rather predictably liberal agenda if he is elected president later this year.

Obama is trying very hard to straddle the fence and avoid answering any substantive questions on how all his lofty rhetoric will actually bring about change. Rothenberg points out that, at the moment, Obama's rhetoric is empty of any real content.

Politicians are notorious for trying to have it both ways, of course. Obama is very successful at pulling this off right now against a primary rival who essentially has no real policy differences with him. In the general election, that will be much harder to get away with.  Right now Obama is enjoying a little bit of a holiday from real scrutiny. At some point he will have to explain how he will bridge the differences he has with himself.