Time To Remember The "Global" In The War On Terror

Mark Steyn does it again, summarizing all I've thought about Obama's snitty response to Bush's Knesset (not Parliament) speech, and getting it just right:

Yes, there are plenty of Democrats who are in favor of negotiating with our enemies, and a few Republicans, too – President Bush's pal James Baker, whose Iraq Study Group was full of proposals to barter with Iran and Syria and everybody else. But that general line is also taken by at least three of Tony Blair's former Cabinet ministers and his senior policy adviser, and by the leader of Canada's New Democratic Party and by a whole bunch of bigshot Europeans. It's not a Democrat election policy, it's an entire worldview. Even Barack Obama can't be so vain as to think his fly-me-to-[insert name of enemy here] concept is an original idea.

Increasingly, the Western world has attitudes rather than policies. It's one thing to talk as a means to an end. But these days, for most midlevel powers, talks are the end, talks without end. Because that's what civilized nations like doing – chit-chatting, shooting the breeze, having tea and crumpets, talking talking talking. Uncivilized nations like torturing dissidents, killing civilians, bombing villages, doing doing doing. It's easier to get the doers to pass themselves off as talkers then to get the talkers to rouse themselves to do anything.

And those well-crafted words brings me to what I feel, increasingly, is wrong with our position in Iraq.

I read of the Druze "300" valiantly standing between the ambitions of Syria and Iran to overwhelm Lebanon in order to assume a power position over Israel and give Syria a port for transshipment of weapons from Iran and NoKo, and I think, why aren't we fighting alongside the Druze?

Why don't we have an adequate force on the ground with air support, to stop the advance of the Hezbollah - Syria - Iran front? Why aren't we using our military assets to give Lebanon breathing room?

We're not fighting this short war because we are tied up with the long war. There are similar opportunities in Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and the Gulf -- like precise attacks on Iran Revolutionary Guard facilities near the Iranian border -- but the long war is limiting our options.

I'm reading Doug Fieth's War and Decision, and going back to the first days after 9/11, we see these bursts of short wars to very much be in the initial response planning. Remember, we are supposed to be fighting terror and those who support terror, not just al-Qaeda. The Pentagon planners envisioned military actions in Africa, Asia and even South America to take out terrorists and their support network.

Then Iraq and Afghanistan turned into long wars.

The fact that they did turn into long wars maybe shows that the short war option may not be viable. Can we strike here and there and change things? If we support the Druze, can we save Lebanon, or will saving Lebanon require another long war?

A good question, for sure, but perhaps the best way to answer it is to try the short war option. Seize the ship with the weapons. Knock out the training camp. Close the bank account. Stop the next Janjaweed attack in Darfur. Capture the terror-king and his henchmen and transport them to some unknown prison for a friendly debriefing.

Do. Do. Do. We are doing a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan; we are converting whole societies bit by bit, allowing them to taste freedom from extremism and tyranny. It's time to do more elsewhere. I don't hear any presidential candidates talking about this, but as we draw down our troops in Iraq over the next few years, transferring authority to a more stable Iraqi government and a better trained Iraqi army and police force, we need to consider "where next?" for our hegemonic military.

We can go anywhere and do just about anything, so let's do hurry up with getting a few tens of thousands of troops available to support freedom and trounce terror in theaters around the globe.

This is not going to be the Global War on Terror until we take it to the terrorists globally.

Hitting Softballs

A friend took issue with Prez Bush's words in Jerusalem yesterday, specifically this part where he spoke about democracy spreading throughout the Middle East.

From Cairo and Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies, where a desire for peace is reinforced by ties of diplomacy, tourism and trade. Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations, where today's oppression is a distant memory and people are free to speak their minds and develop their talents. And al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause.

He put his concerns into an e-mail last night, and I didn't get a chance to answer him today, so ...

You often tell me, "it isn't so, just because you say it's so..."

This sage advice [Suck up! (I love it.)] can be directly applied to today's comments, and in fact, his entire policy for the region.

"We'll be welcomed as liberators..."

As it happens, we were welcomed as liberators. But that was before Iraq turned John Kerry on us and didn't welcome us as liberators after they welcomed us as liberators. Let me count the countries where people pray that some day they will be welcoming us as liberators ...

"Mission accomplished."

Granted, not a perfect PR moment, but it's been exploited by the Lying Left. They know the mission that was referenced was the toppling of Saddam's brutal, repressive, murdering rein, a mission that had, in fact, had been accomplished.

"Saddam Hussein is proliferating WMDs..."

I'm amazed that as bright my friend is, he still repeats these easily rebuttable lies. He must know that our intelligence matched up against Germany's and England's and Russia's. He must know that his own beloved Bill Clinton thought Saddam had WMDs. He must know that Saddam was squirreling away money he stole from Oil-for-Food, intending to spend it on WMDs the first moment he could. And he must know that Saddam frustrated UN weapons inspectors at every turn, increasing the rationality of the "Saddam has WMDs" position.

And on, and on, and on...

Bottom line, it is not even close to so, yet he continues to say it is
so.

So because democracy hasn't spread throughout the Middle East in five short years, we're supposed to give up on the entire concept and leave that entire huge part of the world continue in its totalitarian, Islamo-theocratic dungeon? And leave the future of the world to the jihadists?

We have two alternatives: Hide behind our borders, something al-Qaeda taught us we cannot do, or continue to try to bring liberation and freedom to the oppressed people on our planet. I'll choose the latter.

As If The Polar Bear Listing Weren't Enough

No sooner is the ink dry on yesterday's disastrous threatened listing of the polar bear than the Greenies are back with another proposed listing for a species supposedly impacted by theoretical global warming. From E&E News:

The Bush administration will consider Endangered Species Act protections for a California seabird whose island habitat, environmentalists say, is threatened by climate change.

The Fish and Wildlife Service announced today that protection may be warranted for the ashy storm-petrel, so it will perform a formal status review.

The small, smoke-gray seabird nests and forages on a handful of offshore islands near San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. Its population has already experienced sharp declines. The largest colony in central California decreased by 42 percent from 1972 to 1992, according to a study by scientists at the Point Reyes Bird Observatory in California.

By the way, don't assume that just because scientists did these population studies that they are right. From the snail darter to the spotted owl, the population studies used in endangered species listings are frequently very flawed.

Now here comes the global warming connection:

The review comes in response to a petition and legal challenge from the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity. The storm-petrel petition is one of many requests the group has made for protection of species affected by climate change. Its most high-profile complaint concerned the polar bear, which the administration agreed to list as "threatened" yesterday after several lawsuits. The center also has successfully pressed for the listing of two coral species affected by climate change.

The center's petition predicts sea-level rise could drown important habitat for the bird in sea caves and offshore rocks. Warmer, less productive waters and ocean acidification are expected to reduce the numbers of the storm-petrel's prey -- small larval fish and plankton.

Also under attack by the Center is shipping and other off-shore activities, because they have "lights that can confuse its nocturnal flights." I'll bet there's no proof of that either, but it makes a good argument for a group that is committed to the depopulation of the American West. Click the link, scroll down to the section on water supply, and you'll see the group's founder, Kieran Suckling, pictured, talking about his vision of a depopulated West.

The storm-petrel listing petition is more evidence of the Center's strategy of litigation-storms and listing-storms. They are not content with the ludicrous polar bear listing alone, so they immediately back up their victory yesterday with another listing petition. It's sort of like jurisdiction shopping; they file multiple listing petitions and multiple lawsuits, so that if one falls flat, they've got a back-up.

They did the same thing in the California delta. Once they found a fawningly sympathetic judge who decreed water deliveries to SoCal would have to be cut by 30 percent (YIKES!) to protect the Delta Smelt, the Center promptly filed a listing petition for the long-finned smelt, another Delta fish whose listing would result in further pump cut-backs.

Combine the Center's global warming and water supply litigation and listings and you've got a plan for getting people to move elsewhere, except that people will have nowhere with a good economy to move to, since any growth at all will be stopped because it could lead to a chunk of ice melting of Kamchatka somewhere.

We have seen the enemy; it is within, and its weapon is the Endangered Species Act.

Obama Countinues To Pout Over Bush

Barack the Appeaser continued to play the outraged candidate today, saying in North Dakota:

On a day when we were supposed to be celebrating the anniversary of Israel’s independence, [Bush] accused me and other democrats of wanting to negotiate with terrorists and said we were appeasers, no different from people who appeased Adolph Hitler. That’s what George Bush said in front of the Israeli parliament [sic].

Knesset, Barack. Let's just say for the record that the statement is true. Obama has said that he would meet with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to try to talk out the differences, which is why I loved Bush's comments so much:

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before.

I also used to think there were magic words. I even wrote them down and presented them to clients older and wiser than me, who basically said, "Nice writing, Laer, but words don't change heartfelt beliefs." And what are the beliefs of Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs if not heartfelt?

Obama carries on:

Now that’s exactly the kind of appalling attack that’s divided our country and that alienates us from the world, and that’s why we need change in Washington – that’s part of the reason why I’m running for president of the United States of America. …

It is now an appalling attack to say someone said what they said? Sorry, but if you're the big harmonizer, Barack, you're just going to have to learn to take criticism a bit better than that. Besides, I don't think the world thinks the less of us for saying that words won't sway terrorists.

Actually, the world is more critical of those who say words can work -- like England, Germany and France, who insisted that their superior diplomatic skills could work where America's position wouldn't. The result: Iran has had three years to advance its nuclear program and the Europeans have accomplished absolutely nothing with all their talk.

The world no doubt also sees Obama's belief that he is so God-given to us that he will be able to do what England, German and France couldn't do as incredibly naive and arrogant. (Funny how those two adjectives so often go together with politicians.) If you've got the magic words, Barack, why not share them with us now? Why wait until after the election? Let's hear 'em!

Of course they're going to have to be a lot better than your magic words on Lebanon, Mr. O.

Yet Obama continues his pout:

I want to be perfectly clear to George Bush and John McCain and the people of South Dakota. If George Bush and John McCain want to have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that is a debate that I’m happy to have any time, any place, and that is a debate I will win because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for. …

Obama is doing a fine job of tying McCain to Bush, which is the big new Dem strategy, so much so that MSNBC (aka Obama Central) referred to yesterday's Bush speech as "a giant gift to the Illinois senator and his campaign." But most Americans understand what the words "Neville Chamberlain" mean, and see that all Jimmy Carter does when he talks to Hamas is lend a mantle of legitimacy to killers who just keep on killing.

Now Obama wraps it up with the Big Lie:

Now I’m a strong believer in civility and I’m a strong believer in a bipartisan foreign policy [pause for hysterical guffaws], but that cause is not served with dishonest, divisive attacks of the sort we’ve seen out of George Bush and John McCain the last couple of days.

A bipartisan foreign policy? We all know what that means to the Dem frontrunner: A liberal, soft, dangerous foreign policy. The only thing "bi" about Barack's "bipartisan" is that it's going to be as bad for us abroad as it is at home.

Almost Back

At about 11 this morning, my life will return to normal.

Last week was Coastal Commission. This week I've actually had to wear a tie three times, and that always portends little time for blogging. Monday it was a major new biz presentation. Thursday, I taught a five hour class on community outreach to a client's new project managers, and I'm leaving in a minute to participate in a panel on global warming and housing regulation. Eech.

Then, finally, I'll get my life back. I've missed not being able to comment on so much -- Myanmar, China, the Obama team's telling huffiness over Bush's right-on remarks in Israel, the California Supreme Court's decision on homosexuality ...

OK, maybe I'll be late to my talk, but I have to get this out. The NYT headlines email this a.m. had as its quote of the day some CA gay saying how he finally felt like a first-class citizen, not a second-class one.

How nice. I, and about 80 percent of CA feel like second-class citizens today. We voted against gay marriage and now we're told that our vote doesn't matter. How much more second class can you get?

Gotta run.

Watcher's Winners

Here are a few stories that are really worth reading this week, the winner's of the weekly best o'blogs compiled by the Watcher's Council under the watchful eye of the Watcher of Weasels. And this week's winners were particularly good.

On the Council side, Soccer Dad wears the gold for his piece "Evolution" = "growth," which uses a shockingly too-true premise to set up an even bigger shocker of a story.

The two other best posts of the week came in right behind: Joshuapundit's Lebanon Becomes Hezbollahstan, which will bring you depressingly up to date on Lebanon, and Wolf Howling's The Audacity of Newsweek, that shows how unabashedly biased Newsweek has become.

My own And Tango Makes 420, about the American Library Association's campaign against decency, came in next.

The best post of the week by far came from the milblog Kaboom, simply titled Numb. It is a beautifully written piece that captures poetically and powerfully the exhaustion combat brings. How exhausted? Well ...

Lord, give me the strength not to attack with a baseball at every fool and every chickenhawk and every Apathy Kid and every soft elitist and ever intellectual hack and every Jody and every yuppie and every thirty-something child still finding himself when I get home. It's not worth my time. Do give me the strength to convince them to stop breeding and to kill themselves, in the name of bettering America. It's' the only chance we have.

That exhausted.

POLITICS: Yes, Experience Matters by Baseball Crank came in a strong second. It runs through five points of experience a president needs, points out that few have all and only one has had virtually none of them: Abraham Lincoln. Obama also has none of them, but he is assuredly no Abraham Lincoln.

Also of note: Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist?, which rebuts every black apologist argument and makes it clear: Blacks are disproportionately jailed because they are disproportionately violent, and Lebanon's "300" Heroes, a tale of the Druze defense of Lebanon, as brave and probably as failed as the Spartans against ... who, class? who? ... the Persians.

Some things never change.

See all the winners here. Thanks, Watcher, for fueling up this week's blogospheric hot rod.

Burning Bush Rhetoric In Israel

President Bush said some of those words today in Jerusalem that drive the appeasers crazy. Marking Israel's 60th anniversary, he said:

"Israel's population may be only 7 million, but when you confront terror and evil, you are 307 million strong, because the United States stands with you."

There it is, the "evil"' word; not "'terror and insurrection," but "terror and evil." Not that the AP story would let such stuff stand, mind you:

Bush made no acknowledgment of the hardship Palestinians suffered when the creation of the Jewish state in 1948 displaced hundreds of thousands, a fact that serves as a counterpoint to Israel's two weeks of jubilant celebrations.

Just as AP makes no mention of the UN charter behind Israel's formation, or the cash payments received by happy Palestinians, glad to sell their worthless land, or the Palestinian terror attacks, or how the Palestinian screwed up of myriad Israeli peace initiatives because they're more interested in war than peace.

Bush also reconfirmed his commitment to trying to create a new Middle East, a commitment so many today find naive ... but few can propose a better alternative.

"From Cairo and Riyadh to Baghdad and Beirut, people will live in free and independent societies, where a desire for peace is reinforced by ties of diplomacy, tourism and trade. Iran and Syria will be peaceful nations, where today's oppression is a distant memory and people are free to speak their minds and develop their talents. And al-Qaida, Hezbollah and Hamas will be defeated, as Muslims across the region recognize the emptiness of the terrorists' vision and the injustice of their cause."

It is easy to laugh that off after five years in Iraq. It's easy to give up, vote for Obama, and pretend the world is a nice place. But leadership isn't easy, and as much as Bush has screwed things up, I still love him for the braveness of this vision.

If we can make it happen, Israel will be here to celebrate its 100th birthday. If not, I fear for these wonderful people and their inspirational nation.

More "Wright-isms" Trumpeted

Hugh Hewitt has more Wright-isms this morning, gleaned from past copies of Trinity United's rather hard to find past issues of Trumpet magazine, including this one that has Obama's smiling face on the cover, along with those of Louis Farrakhan, Nation of Islam co-founder Elijah Muhammad and serious leftist, racist fruitbasket Dick Gregory.

There are about a dozen excerpts of Wright-isms at Hugh's post, all with the same awful familiarity, like this:

Conservative fanatics line up on the side of al-Qaeda or they line up behind George Bush. Both are terrorists! Both believe that war is the answer. Both believe in murdering innocent people. George Bush lied to the public.

Of course, it doesn't matter how many more of these we dig up. Those who believe in Obama, like the otherwise wholly sane Token Dem in my office, have found a way to forgive him these trespasses, choosing the less obvious "those aren't his beliefs" or more onerous "well Wright's not all wrong" answers over the more probable "he's covering up a part of his true self" answer. And those who are already appalled by the Wright-Obama connection don't need to be more appalled; it's already quite sufficient.

Looking Closer At The Polar Bear Listing

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne tried to mute the impact of his listing today of the polar bear by assuring us in his comments that he's covered our fears of economic meltdown by preparing an administrative guidance:

“I am also announcing that this listing decision will be accompanied by administrative guidance and a rule that defines the scope of impact my decision will have, in order to protect the polar bear while limiting the unintended harm to the society and economy of the United States.” ...

[Fish & Wildlife Service] Director [Dale] Hall will issue guidance to Fish and Wildlife Service staff that the best scientific data available today cannot make a causal connection between harm to listed species or their habitats and greenhouse gas emissions from a specific facility, or resource development project, or government action.

Forget it; the guidance might as well have been written on toilet paper; it cannot alter the provisions of ESA, and you have to dig no further into the final rule to find this:

This final rule activates the consultation provisions of section 7 of the Act for the polar bear.

That means that any project in the US -- Alaska or lower 48 or anywhere else our flag flies -- that could increase greenhouse gases will now be subject to a challenge by enviros if it doesn't undergo a section 7 review, and that they will almost certainly win those challenges. So thanks to Kempthorne's pathetic punt today, projects like factories, power plants (as if we'll ever build another one of those), developments on the urban fringe and new roads or transmission lines will be challenged, and subsequently cut back, delayed or even stopped.

This was the Greens' intent all along; otherwise they wouldn't have petitioned for listing, so they won very big today. Even so, the mere mention of the guidance document got the paranoid hyper-greens on the left hysterical and paranoid, as evidenced by this blogger:

Ah ha! Since the news on this is just filtering out this minute, you'll forgive me for my delusional optimism spawned from the new listing rule for the imperiled polar bear. No, you knew it was too good to be true that the Fish and Wildlife Service's acknowledgment that the polar bear is threatened by sea ice loss and that sea ice is lost by global warming would mean that we would try to stop global warming.

[He then quotes parts of the same Kempthorne quote]

No, we must instead continue to "allow continuation of vital energy production in Alaska," i.e. drill for oil in polar bear habitat. Right. Of course we do. Must. Protect. The. Oil. Economy.

Alaska, Iraq, Afghanistan.... all territories conquered by the Army of Big Oil. And we know who is the Commander in Chief of that particular military.

That will be the Greenie/Warmie response, and they will argue it time and again on project after project, periodically finding sympathetic judges and setting detrimental precedents.

Accompanying the decision was a special rule, allowed under section 4(d) of the act only for threatened listings like today's, not endangered listings. We have used 4(d)s in the past to circumvent some of the more onerous aspects of a listing, but this one is pretty darn milquetoast, dealing mostly with things like Native American take of bears.

There is, however, a lengthy section on successful mitigation measures for oil and gas exploration in Alaska, specifying things like having no operations within a mile of a polar bear den, and having bear biologists on hand to monitor operations. The results of these measures, says the rule, have been positive:

Data provided by monitoring and reporting programs in the Beaufort Sea and in the Chukchi Sea, as required under the incidental take authorizations for oil and gas activities, have shown that the mitigation measures have successfully minimized effects on polar bears. For example, since 1991, when the incidental take regulations became effective in the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, there has been no known instance of a polar bear being killed or of personnel being injured by a bear as a result of oil and gas industry activities. The mitigation measures associated with the Beaufort Sea incidental take regulations, which, based on the monitoring and reporting data, have proven to minimize human–bear interactions, will be part of the Chukchi Sea incidental take regulations currently under review.

That could give some cover to Alaskan oil ops, but the Greenies/Warmies will peck away at it, creating more and more restrictions, limiting the number of days exploration or extraction can occur, challenging the roadway that links the Prudhoe Bay facilities to the South, ad infinitum. And what of oil projects in, say, Texas or Montana? For that and any other industrial development, the 4(d) also tries to limit when section 7 consultations will be required:

But in the simplest terms, a Federal agency evaluates whether consultation is necessary by analyzing what will happen to listed species or critical habitat “with and without” the proposed action. Typically, this analysis will review direct effects, indirect effects, and the effects that are caused by interrelated and interdependent activities to determine if the proposed action “may affect” listed species or critical habitat. For those effects beyond the footprint of the action, our regulations at 50 CFR 402.02 require that they both be “caused by the action under consultation” and “reasonably certain to occur.” That is, effects are only appropriately considered in a section 7 analysis if there is a causal connection between the proposed action and a discernible effect to the species or critical habitat that is reasonably certain to occur. One must be able to “connect the dots” between the proposed action, an effect, and an impact to the species and there must be a reasonable certainty that the effect will occur.

This is clearly an attempt to limit the enforcement of the provisions of Section 7 only to those projects that would, say, slap a subdivision down over a bunch of polar bear dens, or light big bonfires on the shrinking icecap. Would that it were so.

Again, all the Greenies/Warmies have to do is find a judge who finds a direct correlation between the emissions of a factory in Kansas to the melting of ice in the Arctic, and they're off and running. There are precedents that have protected property owners from the arbitrary and capricious enforcement of Section 7, notably Arizona Cattlegrowers’ Association v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (273 F.3d 1229, 9th cir. 2001), but everything is endlessly challengable in the ESA world, and challenges mean delay, which mean negative economic impact and sometimes dead projects.

A bolder administration would have said that because polar bear populations have increased, because last summer's loss of polar sea ice was more than made up for with this freezing winter's massive new formations, and because the US has cut carbon emissions substantially and is on the way to cutting them further, a listing isn't warranted at this time.

Not doing so is probably just a sign of how weak and disappointing the Bush administration has become. There is an argument that could be made that this is all strategery, i.e., better to get a "threatened" listing with a guidance and a 4(d) from this administration than a real stinker for the next administration ... but I'm tired of scanning the distant horizons for some sign of good performance from the inept Bush administration ... beyond the surge, anyway. Thank God for the surge.

Bush Authors Polar Disaster

It looks like very, very bad news on the polar bear front:

WASHINGTON -- The Bush Administration Wednesday handed environmentalists a major victory, determining there was sufficient scientific evidence to declare the polar bear a threatened species, according to several people close to the matter.

Opponents said it could not only trigger major new obstacles for oil companies seeking to drill in the Arctic -- where some of the last remaining reserves are to be found -- but could also potentially affect nearly every regulatory decision that might impact global warming, including decisions for coal power plants. (WSJ)

The ruling isn't out yet, and this could be a bad early read. But if they're right and the Bush administration folded to the Greens on this issue, it will be a legacy-maker for him ... and certainly not a good one.

If you play the markets, know that if the decision comes down the way the WSJ says it will, oil prices will continue to rise. Good for Big Oil, bad for everyone else.

The Unspeakable Foe We Face

Words sometimes just cannot express the rank ugliness of Islamic terror. As a communications professional, I've found in cases like this, it's best to let the ugliness speak for itself, so:

A young girl carrying explosives that killed her, an Iraqi captain and injured four soldiers was blown up by remote control, officials said today.

The incident happened as she approached an Iraqi command post in Youssifiyah, south Baghdad, earlier this morning.

Iraqi army Lieutenant Ahmed Ali confirmed that the girl, who had hidden explosives strapped to her, was the cause of the blast. ...

"The bomber was detonated by remote control, killing Captain Wassem al-Maamouri and injuring four soldiers," Ali added. (the Guardian)

Just to clarify for any confused readers out there, here's a photo of how we treat young girls in Iraq.

How old is a "young" girl, anyway? Twelve? Eight? Younger? Whatever her young age, she was obviously too young to be counted on to be a noble martyr Hell-bound hooligan in Islam's war on all that is free and modern, so al-Qaeda in Iraq just murdered her instead.

Obama and the Left will look at this as more chaos, and more reason to leave Iraq. Who strapped the explosives to their intellect and detonated it remotely? Terrorist Islamists are not people who should be given the boost a US defeat in Iraq would give them.

Every day we're there, more of these scum are killed and their infrastructure becomes less effective, as is evidenced by the fact that they must resort to remotely detonating young girls and mentally retarded women -- actions far more pathetic than Japan's use of suicide pilots in their last gasp before defeat in the Pacific.

Wednesday Reading

I was just telling Incredible Wife last night how much I get out of reading the Watcher's Council nominees for best writing on the blogosphere each week, and here it is, time for a new bunch to get processed.

Here, then, courtesy of the Watcher of Weasels, is this week's reading list:

Council links:

1. "Evolution" = "Growth"
   Soccer Dad
2. Making Capitalists
   Bookworm Room
3. The Audacity of Newsweek
   Wolf Howling
4. Curiouser and Curiouser
   The Glittering Eye
5. And People think George W. Bush Is a Moron
   The Colossus of Rhodey
6. BUMPED: McCain Ahead In Electoral Vote Race?
   Rhymes With Right
7. Where we went wrong
   Hillbilly White Trash
8. Protecting Marriage
   Done With Mirrors
9. Los Angeles' Combat High School
   The Education Wonks
10. Lebanon Becomes Hezbollahstan
    Joshuapundit
11. And Tango Makes 420
    Cheat Seeking Missiles
12. Poll: Aberica Is a Sucky Place To Live Right Now
    Right Wing Nut House

Non-council links:

1. POLITICS: Yes, Experience Matters
   Baseball Crank
2. Obama on Lebanon: Cognitive Egocentric Porridge
   Augean Stables
3. Lebanon's "300" Heroes
   Ya Libnan
4. Numb
   Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal
5. Is the Criminal-Justice System Racist?
   City Journal
6. Military Exceeds All Recruiting Goals
   UrbanGrounds
7. Minn: Muslim Students Force Out Disabled Teacher With Dog
   Atlas Shrugs
8. The Fall-Out: How a Guilty Liberal Lost His Innocence
   Democratiya
9. Heroes and Villains
   Dr. Sanity
10. "We Are All Jews Now!"
    All Things Beautiful
11. Has Obama "Lost His Bearings"?
    Sister Toldjah
12. Holding Things Accountable for What Men Do With Them
    Classical Values
13. Monopsony Madness
    The Atlantic
14. Boris Scares Cameroonies
    Dodgeblogium

Check back here Friday morning for the results. Thanks, Watcher, for such masterful cutting and pasting.

Quote Of The Day: Sex Tax Edition

"Twenty-five percent? What's he trying to do, become a partner?"
-- Jerry Tatarian, strip club operator

A tax on the sex biz, now there's a tax I could ... uh ... get my arms around. Guys like Jerry Tatarian, right, purveyor of Flamingo Showgirls in Anaheim, a nude bar, would have to charge a 25 percent tax on all transactions in his establishment under a bill offered up by Cal Assemblyman Charles Calderone (D, natch).

Calderone says the tax is legit because adult businesses get away cheap and cost local jurisdictions plenty because they spawn prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases and other ills. The bill, says the OCRegister, would add the 25 percent tax to any items sold in an "adult entertainment venue." That would be anyplace that gets at least half of its revenue from sexually explicit performances or from the sale of adult videos, magazines or other media. The tax would be charged on anything sold there, even a pack of gum ... if they sell such stuff.

If they can slap luxury taxes on yachts and high-end autos, why not on porn? It is, after all, anything but a necessity. (Some would disagree. There are various "anonymous" groups they should be attending.) And I kind of like the general idea of sleezeballs paying more than the rest of us. It's only right, right?

But that "D" after Calderone's name keeps bugging me, so I keep thinking, and sure enough there it is, the tax killer. It's not the pleas from the pornographers that their businesses are hurting already and they'll have to lay off strippers if the tax goes through. It's certainly not porn lobbyist Matt Grey, who attacks the bill for not putting a tax on "legitimate" (his quotes) theatrical productions, too.

No, it all boils down to a spokesperson for the local school district, who told the Reg:

"If you can afford to buy… whatever… you can afford to pay tax on it."

Yes, the teacher unions, those champions of unlimited spending with ultra-limited accountability, are behind the tax. Oh, please! Their irritating pouting actually makes me almost sympathetic to the stripper who might get laid off (as opposed to just laid).

The teachers unions offering up a mix of "tax the rich because the bastards deserve it" and a high-volume whine about the poor, poor schools needing more money. Give me a break. The state school budget in CA is protected by law -- it can't be cut. They get lottery money. They exact exorbitant fees from new home construction. They are a huge funnel into which we pour money ... and for what?

Schools get worse and worse. Bad teachers aren't fired. Bad administrators are advanced. And the education gruel served up to students gets thinner and thinner every year.

There are two ways to fix a revenue problem: tax stupider or spend smarter. I'm afraid that puts me with the porn guys on this one. Excuse me while I go wash my hands.

Greens Mount Big Polar Bear Push

It's clearly a case of Greens Gone Wild. From the Center for Biological Depravity Diversity to Al Gore's newbie, We Can Solve It (Cutely, "We" for short), they've all got their electronic petitions and letter-generators going wild, flooding the Dept. of Interior with please to ignore science and buy into hysteria list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act.

"We" is taking a very low key approach, asking folks to sign a petition that says only:

"Mr. Secretary, please ensure that the polar bear gains the protection of the Endangered Species Act today."

The email I got from We today said 100,000 had signed the petition and they're shooting for a goal of 115,000. That sounds fishy; clearly their initial goal was something big and round, like 200,000 or 500,000.

The Center is much more hyper in its pitch for its own petition:

On Thursday, the federal government will make one of the most important decisions in conservation history.

True enough, thus far.

If it declares the polar bear to be an "endangered" species, the decision will set off an unprecedented worldwide discussion on global warming… and establish legal requirements to do something about it.

They don't say what that "something" is -- basically putting any new project of any kind that has a footprint under the federal microscope.

If the government refuses, desperately needed global action will again be delayed by the Bush administration's stubbornness. Short-term corporate profits will continue to control political agendas and threaten life on Earth. All of life on Earth.

How can Bush delay global action? He only has authority (limited authority) over one small part of the globe. Besides, the ESA doesn't allow economic impacts -- "short-term corporate profits" -- to influence decisions on listings, and the Center knows it, since they raise the argument all the time in their endless river of litigation. But that makes lousy rhetoric.

They go on to state a goal of 60,000 signatures on their petition.

Interestingly, another major environmental litigation mill, the Natural Resources Defense Council, apparently isn't on board with the polar bear since its current list of issues shuns the bear. Why? If the critter's about to go under, the NRDC would definitely be engaged. It litigates regularly on endangered species issues.

Perhaps the NRDC knows what we all know -- that the polar bears are doing just fine, thank you, and this is all a false effort to misuse the Endangered Species Act as an economic jackhammer instead of a law to protect animals.

Oily Pundits

As President Bush leaves for Riyadh to mark the 75th anniversary of US-Saudi relations, there is for a change something other than terrorism on his mind:


Bush is going to ask the Saudis to do what they can to stabilize oil prices, which to some extent at least, the Saudis can help do by increasing production.

He could be asking the impossible, since the market may be out of control as world demand has surged and speculators are jacking up the market. (Does it remind you of the last couple years of housing price insanity before that bubble burst?)

But Bush's request is not unreasonable because the Saudis have plenty of reason to try to control the market, and oil man Bush knows it. But that doesn't stop the oily pundits from spouting off:

John [sic] Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies issued a caveat of a different sort, warning that the US president should not be too hopeful about winning Saudi cooperation.

"In past years, the Saudis have really put themselves out to help American presidents," Alterman said, adding that "they're not really going to put themselves out to help this president."

Washington, he said, will be hampered by the legacy of its massive missteps in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe over the past few years.

"There is suddenly a need to hedge against US incompetence. That changes the whole way these meetings go, and it changes what happens when the US president says I really need you to do this," Alterman said. (AFP)

The "massive missteps in Iraq" have had many downsides, but it hasn't been particularly detrimental t the Saudis. Bush's boldness in taking on Saddam (yeah, second guess that; I don't blame you) kept the oil markets stable to the Saudi's great benefit.

Plus, our presence in Iraq has probably contained Iran. Who knows where the mad Shi'a mullahs would be if there weren't US troops on their border. Another big favor at Bush's (and our) expense.

Then this: "There is suddenly a need to hedge against US incompetence." I really don't have any idea what Alterman is trying to say here. There is no reason to hedge against Bush any more; he's in his last months and won't be doing much. Besides, even if you say Bush is incompetent, what has that incompetence cost the Saudis? $115-a-barrel oil? It could be worse, eh?

So whose incompetence is Alterman talking about? Obama's? That's credible, but I get the sense he's got an agenda and that's not at all what he means.

This Thursday And $200-A-Barrel Oil

Thursday is it: The big day for the future of our global economy.

It's not a particularly big day for the polar bear, even though its the cause of all that may follow this Thursday's mandated decision by the Dept. of the Interior regarding the proposed listing of the bear under the federal Endangered Species Act. We could devastate the global economy to save the bear and have no effect on it whatsoever, since the threat to it is only theoretical, while the threat to our economy posed by a listing is anything but.

The theory, for those who have been in hibernation, is that global warming is threatening the polar bear due to thinning polar ice. Never mind that this year's icepack is just about the thickest on record. To save the bear, we must SAVE THE PLANET and STOP GLOBAL WARMING.

That means anything, down to turn the key in your Yukon (or your Prius, for that matter) is contributing to the EXTINCTION OF THE CUTE POLAR BEARS and must be stopped. New power plants? Drilling on the North Slope? Forget it.

Here's a nice summary on the economic consequences of a listing from Kevin Hasset of the American Enterprise Institute, writing at Bloomberg:

There are two reasons why that decision, if it is made, will be momentous.

Geographic Reach

The first is the possible wide geographic reach of the global warming argument. The snail darter almost killed a single dam. The polar bear could, in theory at least, stop everything.

Suppose someone wants to build a coal-burning power plant in Florida. Environmentalists might challenge the construction on the grounds that the plant will emit greenhouse gases leading to global warming and an increased threat to polar bears.

It is hard to say how such challenges would play out. My guess is that it would heighten the pressure on the U.S. to adopt a cap-and-trade emissions program or a carbon tax.

The second impact of this ruling is that it will likely end all Arctic exploration for oil and gas, at least in the U.S. Given surging world demand for oil, increased supply is the only thing standing between us and $200-a-barrel oil.

Costly Restrictions

These restrictions will have a large cost. "The U.S. Geological Survey and the Norwegian company StatoilHydro estimate that the Arctic holds as much as one-quarter of the world's remaining undiscovered oil and gas deposits,'' Scott Borgerson, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in the March/April issue of Foreign Affairs. "Some Arctic wildcatters believe this estimate could increase substantially as more is learned about the region's geology."

Many biologists believe that global warming is a serious threat to the polar bear. If that leads to the polar bear being listed as threatened this week, then the world you live in will have fundamentally changed.

Calling It

I've worked with the Endangered Species Act for about 20 years now through some of the hairiest listings of the recent era and here's my take on what will happen Thursday.

First, Interior will not list the polar bear as endangered; there is clearly no basis for that.

On the more likely listing as "threatened," Interior will also defer, opting instead to list a few distinct population segments whose numbers have been declining in recent years. The listing will require more study and additional controls on local impacts to those populations, but will be crafted to keep global warming out of the picture.

Science is part of the reason for this prediction, although I've seen Interior ignore science in the past. George Bush is the other reason. If Gore had been elected, the bear would have been listed years ago and we'd be suffering the consequences. If the decision were not to be made before the next president takes office, any of the three candidates could be counted on to list the bear.

So Bush is the final hope for sanity, and the scenario I've laid out is more likely than him denying the listing outright. Such a denial would be justified, but even George has been looking a little green lately. I hope I'm right. $200-a-barrel oil will be just the start of the heartburn we'll suffer if I'm wrong.

While We Weren't Watching

So busy have we been tracking the Obama/Clinton race that we haven't really been tracking the GOP returns. It turns out that even though McCain long ago got the delegates he needs, there's some interesting stuff in those overlooked stats. Andrew Malcolm at Top of the Ticket fills us in:

In Indiana, McCain got 77% of the recent Republican primary vote, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney, who've each long ago quit and endorsed McCain, still got 10% and 5% respectively, while Paul took 8%.

On the same May 6 in North Carolina, McCain received less than three-quarters of Republican votes (74%), while Huckabee got 12%, Paul 7% and Alan Keyes and No Preference took a total of 7%.

Pennsylvania was even slightly worse for the GOP's presumptive nominee, who got only 73% to a combined 27% for Paul (16%) and Huckabee (11%).

Either of the Dem candidates would kill for 73% of the vote, but for McCain, his inability to command the Dem vote so long after he won the nomination shows that there could be considerable trouble ahead, first at the convention, then in the General.

Malcolm's column focuses on a possible convention fight from Ron Paul's supporters:

The last three months Paul's forces, who donated $34.5 million to his White House effort and upwards of one million total votes, have, as The Ticket has noted, been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates. ...

They hope to demonstrate their disagreements with McCain vocally at the convention through platform fights and an attempt to get Paul a prominent speaking slot. Paul, who's running unopposed in his home Texas district for an 11th House term, still has some $5 million in war funds and has instructed his followers that their struggle is not about a single election, but a longterm revolution for control of the Republican Party.

So eager are they to follow their leader's words, that Paul's supporters have driven his new book, "The Revolution: A Manifesto," to the top of several bestseller lists.

Still, all the nastiness the Paulites could possible foist on the convention will pale by comparison to what the Clinton faction could do to Obama. The Paulites are taking the long-term view, determined to hang in there until the GOP becomes fiscally conservative and isolationist. A mixed bag there.

Short term, as in now through 2012, there may be more to worry about from the Huckabee set.

Huckabee has professed never-ending allegiance to McCain (at least for this race), but in a piece I really didn't like much because of its paranoid and bizarre tone about Christians, Robert Novak spells out a cultish scenario, in which Obama is a biblical curse and Huckabee God's choice for 2012:

One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me that Huckabee, in personal conversation with him, had embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals: that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible's prophecy.

According to this activist, at the heart of the let-Obama-win movement is longtime Virginia conservative leader Michael Farris -- the nation's leading home-school advocate, who is now chancellor of Patrick Henry College (in Purcellville, Va.) for home-schooled students. Best known politically as the losing Republican candidate for lieutenant governor of Virginia in 1993, Farris is regarded as one of the hardest-edged Christian politicians. He is reported in evangelical circles to promote the biblical justification for an Obama plague-like presidency.

Novak doesn't report that droves of Christians will vote Obama to bring on the plague; in fact, he reports that Farris has said he would never vote for either Obama or Clinton. But they will be at the convention to push the Christian right agenda.

The media is playing up this story in part because the Dem race as slid into a boring period, like the final rounds of a heavyweight match, with the opponents leaning into each other, landing tired body punches, and in part because any McCain news is news.

But it seems to me that it will play out primarily in the arcane affair of drafting the platform, and that's not at all a bad thing. McCain's platform could use a commitment to fiscal conservatives and strict constructionist judges, and little more than that is likely to come out of the battle.

Now what I'd really like to see is a bunch of stories speculating on what the Dem convention is likely to be like.

hat-tip: memeorandum

Mother's Day Sunday Scan

Hi, Mom!

Inside the Beltway, my mom's going about her mother's day, no doubt anticipating a call from us later today. Despite our differences on politics and religion, which are enough to shatter any normal relationship, we are very close and I would not be who I am today without her -- and I mean that in the best way possible.

She took mothering seriously. She wasn't just raising kids (although she made sure there was a big dose of that in the program -- people who know my mom might have trouble visualizing her as a Cub Scout mom, for example), she was raising two grown-up men. She wanted to make sure that when my older brother and I grew up, we would have a solid foundation in the old liberal arts tradition.

So thanks! And thanks also for the deep friendship you've made with the mother of my children. Having the two moms in my life so close is one of my great joys!

To my readers: Thanks for indulging me. In return, please feel free to pirate the tacky Mother's Day greeting image above.

Muslims Cop Killers?

My brother-in-law, a Special Forces vet and police officer, is on the board of a group that watches out for the widows and orphans of police officers who are killed in the line of duty. He forwarded me this alert:

Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski
Philadelphia Police Department
Pennsylvania

End of Watch: Saturday, May 3, 2008

Biographical Info
Age: 40
Tour of Duty: 12 years
Badge Number: 486

Incident Details
Cause of Death: Gunfire
Date of Incident: Saturday, May 3, 2008
Weapon Used: Rifle; AK-47
Suspect Info: Shot and killed

Sergeant Stephen Liczbinski was shot and killed while responding to a bank robbery call at approximately 11:30 am.

Two men dressed in female Muslim garb had robbed a Bank of America on Aramingo Avenue. Sergeant Liczbinski encountered the suspects on East Schiller Street and stopped their car. As he exited his patrol car, a suspect opened fire with an AK-47, striking Sergeant Liczbinski several times. Several citizens who witnessed the incident rushed to assist Sergeant Liczbinski, wrapping his wounds in an effort to stop the bleeding. Sergeant Liczbinski told them "Tell my wife I love her", before he fell into unconsciousness. Another officer and a citizen carried Sergeant Liczbinski into a patrol car and he was transported to a local hospital, where he died from his wounds.

The suspects continued to flee, but crashed their vehicle. One suspect fled and the second suspect stole another vehicle, but was shot and killed by responding K-9 officers. A second suspect was arrested the following day and an arrest warrant was issued for a third suspect.

Sergeant Liczbinski had served with the Philadelphia Police Department for 12 years. He is survived by his wife and three children.

There is no evidence the perps -- Howard Cain, 33, who was shot and killed by police, Levon Warner, 38, who was arrested, and Eric DeShawn Floyd, 33, who is subject to a massive manhunt -- are Muslims. The local news coverage is lauding a lot of praise on Liczbinski, but is drawing no conclusions about Islam and the crime.

At this point, there's really just one point to be made from the story: It is perfectly sensible and valid for us to put restrictions on Muslim dress in the US for security reasons. It's not racial profiling to poke, prod and scan every single Muslim man and woman in traditional clothing.

Time For A New Perfume?

I have no explanation whatsoever for this:

A woman required 20 stitches to her face after a pelican crashed into her in the sea off Florida, apparently diving for fish.

The bird, which died in Thursday's collision, ripped a gash in Debbie Shoemaker's face as she bathed near the city of St Petersburg.

The city fire chief said he had never heard of a diving pelican hit a person.

Pelicans grow to up to 30lb (13kg) and can dive from heights of 60 to 70 feet (18 to 21 metres).

Ms Shoemaker, 50, returned home on Friday, the Associated Press reports.

Being Harry

Harry Reid has said a lot of truly stupid things in his day, but this is toppers, what he said about Hillary Clinton's recent racial analysis of her prospects vs. Howdy Obama's, i.e., that she can be counted on for the scruffy but hard-working white vote while Obama can be assured of the snotty white vote and the lazy black vote.

Here's Harry:

“I am confident that she meant nothing."

Well done, Harry! I see why they made you Speaker, since you speak just so darn well.

Leaves Of The Other Guy's Grass

In the scheme of Global Things, this is perhaps the most troubling squib I've read lately:

This week, Saudi Arabia announced plans to invest in overseas fisheries, livestock and food production, and is reportedly trying to partner with Thai rice farms to lock in future supplies. Libya is in talks with Ukraine about growing wheat there, and as China tries to feed its expanding middle class, it's looking to buy up farmland in Africa and South America. Commodities analyst Richard Feltes, with MF Global, says for decades these countries relied on cheap and abundant world surpluses to meet their food needs. (source)

Let's follow the line on this one. No, not the line where everything turns out all right. What fun is that?

Instead let's follow the line where global food supplies run short and Chinese Army troops are needed to keep hungry locals away from the fields they bought with the interest they earned from US Treasuries. Then the People's Army escorts the crops past the really hungry people to the docks, where underfed stevedores stare at the Chinese with their Type 56 AK-47 knockoffs, thinking, "If I pocket a handful of this wheat, will they shoot me?"

Yeah, that line. Anyone selling their country's land to the Saudis or the Chinese should see that this is the endgame that's in play, the endgame that everyone's anticipating. Yet they sell.

One very, very strange and troubling world.

Great Moments In Global Warming

Another expedition to draw attention to the horror of global warming has ended in frozen failure:

South African snow adventurer Correne Erasmus-Coetzer has been forced to abandon her dream of becoming the first African woman to cross the icy continent of Greenland on foot. The dream came to an end this week when the expedition of nine men and women came up against a ferocious wind and snow storm, and rapidly dwindling food supplies, as they approached the quarter-way mark of their 550km slog from the east to west coast of Greenland, across the Arctic Circle. Erasmus-Coetzer was hoping to create awareness about global warming and raise money for the Durban-based Wilderness Leadership School.

Keep 'em coming! I just with the MSM would give us a nice fat list of all these failed global warming propaganda jaunts. And speaking of poor performance by MSM, closer to home, the media's pro-global warming bias is actually threatening the safety of the readers they serve. William Tate tells the story in American Thinker:

When Maine officials tried to warn residents of the dangers of this winter’s near-record snowpack, Big Media slanted the story, hampering efforts to warn folks of the danger. “This winters [sic] near-record snowfall has created a flood potential that is above normal,” began a news advisory released by the Maine River Flow Advisor Commission on March 6th.

“Statewide water content readings from this week’s snow survey are some of the highest since 1969, the ‘snow season’ of record, and in some locations higher than the record.” In case there was any doubt, the banner headline on the release reads: “Spring Flood Potential Elevated Due to Near-Record Snowfall.”

However, the lead in the Associated Press story in the next day’s edition of the major regional daily, the Boston Globe, downplayed the threat posed by the snowpack, referring to it as just “above-average,” and shifting the emphasis to concern about an approaching storm. “The National Weather Service says weekend rain could cause some flooding of streets and small streams.”

Shying away from reporting record snowfall just to keep the global warming myth alive? Really? How could that be?

The Globe is owned by the New York Times Company. Both the Times and the Associated Press are heavily invested in the myth of Global Warming, or—as I like to call it—Global Warning. Record snowpack means higher than normal amounts of snow, colder than usual temperatures, or both. None of which readily fits into the MSM’s chosen story line that mankind is giving Mother Nature a fever. Big Media’s Global Warning bias has largely remained in the realm of theory; now it has begun to endanger people’s lives and property in real time.

It gives me chills.

hat-tip: ICECAP