How do all those UFO’s get in and out without being noticed?
It’s Not Often That They’re This Honest
Not anti-war. On the other side;
Many Democrats have anticipated that, at best, Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker would present a mixed analysis of the success of the current troop surge strategy, given continued violence in Baghdad. But of late there have been signs that the commander of U.S. forces might be preparing something more generally positive. [House Majority Whip James] Clyburn said that would be “a real big problem for us.”
Discussion at NRO;
The New York Times ran a piece Monday by two non-“neoconservatives” Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack arguing that the war in Iraq can be won. Is this indicative of some kind of mood change afoot? Could we really win this war? Could the rhetoric in Washington really change? National Review Online asked a group of experts.
Bonus read: another dispatch from Michael Yon.
An Inconvenient Pond Scum
On his presidential campaign trail late in 1999 and in serious need of at least some farm votes, Al Gore boasted to a Midwest audience that it was he who had cast a tie-breaking vote in 1994 against a proposal by New Jersey Democrat Sen. Bill Bradley which would have cut tax incentives for ethanol fuel. “It’s well known that I’ve always supported ethanol. And I have not ducked when votes for … agricultural interests were on the floor.”
[…]
Now, we discover that, thanks to increased ethanol production, something else is turning “Green” — the Gulf of Mexico. A huge 8,543-square-mile dead zone, roughly the size of New Jersey, is growing off the coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. It is the result of a huge algae growth, fueled by nutrients flushed from the farmlands in the Midwest watershed.
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Reader Tips
Your Tuesday reader tips thread.
Keith Ellison liberal, democrat, muslim congressman is begged by Iraqis to help fight al-Qaeda.
They needed to make room for the Watersports programming;
Concerns about the “sinister uses” of guns in society have prompted
University of Toronto officials to rid the campus of its 88-year-old sport shooting range, despite its continued popularity and spotless safety record.
The only thing missing from this story is a crop sprayer.
Time to pull out of Toronto. (scroll down)
In a socialist paradise, imagine the showpiece that the premier’s own riding must be.
Add yours in the comments.
You Don’t Tug On Superman’s Cape
… you don’t piss into the wind, you don’t pull the mask off the Lone Ranger and you don’t go to Daily Kos for your public policy advice;
A backlash quickly emerged after the Telluride Town Council adopted a resolution last week calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
“It’s huge, unbelievable,” said Telluride Mayor John Pryor. “Ski groups are canceling for the winter. Hundreds of people are bailing. The (town) Web site is flooded with people saying they’re canceling their vacations here.”
Just because they share your hill, dude – doesn’t mean they share your politics.
I Hope You’re Sitting Down
“A War We Just Might Win”
VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.
Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.
After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated — many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.
Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.
That was from the New York Times.
SDA readers won’t find this surprising at all – Yon and others have been reporting it for weeks;
The most important and best-known example of this is in Anbar Province, which in less than six months has gone from the worst part of Iraq to the best (outside the Kurdish areas). Today the Sunni sheiks there are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies. Just a few months ago, American marines were fighting for every yard of Ramadi; last week we strolled down its streets without body armor.
RTWT.
Update – Discussion at NRO.
(Speaking of “others”, Michael Totten has another Baghdad dispatch.)
Well Done!
“Would it be mean to tell Africa about the global economy?”
A Bad Week To Be A Liberal
Greg Staples is all over the carnage;
The first event in Halifax two weeks ago — a cocktail reception featuring Leader Stephane Dion and six of his erstwhile rivals — attracted about 60 people who paid $250 each. After expenses, however, party insiders say the event netted only about $5,400.
$5,400 down.
$3,994,600.00 to go.
Now that’s some kind of organization. Nearly $10,000 to pull off a cocktail reception that would have fit inside the Delisle community hall with half the floor space roped off. What were they serving for drinks?
Speaking of needing a drink…
The furor over the year-end grants to groups seen to be friendly with the Liberal Party began last April with a story that the Bengali Cultural Society received $250,000. The story had legs because one of the organization’s executives was vice-president of the riding association of Liberal MP Maria Minna.
The next day, we found out that the Iranian-Canadian Community Centre was given $200,000 just three weeks after it registered as a charity and that its directors included a Liberal candidate in the coming election.
More at the link.
Reader Tips
Open thread for tips.
Someone Call The ACLU
Just kidding.
At LGF;
I’ve received an email from Stanislav Shmulevich, who has been arrested in New York for putting a Koran in a toilet at Pace University. And his case is even more outrageous than we first reported.
First, Shmulevich was arrested and jailed for 24 hours. Second, he’s not facing misdemeanor charges—he’s being charged with two felonies, criminal mischief and aggravated harassment.
Felonies. For putting a book in a toilet.
[…]
Mr. Shmulevich is caught in a Kafkaesque nightmare right out of the Soviet Union, and it’s all happening at the demand of the Muslim Student Association and the Council on American Islamic Relations.
Discussion at the New English Review.
Iraq 1 – Terror 0
Allies In Sustainable Poverty
Clearwater River Dene First Nation and the neighboring community of La Loche are among the most economically challenged in the province, with all the accompanying social ills – crime, substance abuse, welfare dependence. But save your sympathies. Apparently, they like it that way;
Christopher Hopkins, the president and CEO of Oilsands Quest Inc., gets a steely look in his eyes when you ask him about the reason he’s moving the bunkhouses from one of the two camps his company had constructed at the Axe Lake oilsands project in the northwestern corner of Saskatchewan.
He’s moving the camp infrastructure, which can house up to 100 workers in hotel-level comfort, to the Alberta side of the border, where Oilsands Quest also has oilsand leases on land contiguous to its Saskatchewan property.
The move west to Alberta is more than symbolic to Hopkins, whose company was in the news this past June when road access to his camps was cut off on Saskatchewan provincial Highway 955 when members of the Clearwater River Dene First Nation, under the direction of Chief Roy Cheecham, refused access for vehicles or people headed to the Oilsands Quest camp.
The blockade left a lasting impression on Hopkins, who says he has no desire or plans in the future to meet with Cheecham again.
“I have told the chief. I have told anyone who will listen. We will never be caught in a blockade like that again,” Hopkins said. “And I mean it.”
That’s not the only barrier to development. Cheecham has allies in Regina.
Hopkins won’t say anything bad about the Government of Saskatchewan, but notes he had to submit 18 copies of his application to various government offices in Regina for the right to lay down more than 900 kilometres of new seismic lines, plus do additional drilling into the bitumen formation.
Many in the industry speculate that Saskatchewan’s oil sands deposits may rival those of Alberta.
Now you know why they speculate.
Related: Ending the desecration of Father Sky and Mother Earth through the miracle of outdoor plumbing….
An Old War Dog
Yes, I know there are legions of liberals, so blinded by their certainty that the Supreme Court cheated Al Gore out of the presidency that they actually profess to believe that there were no ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq. To them I would say consider this: Syria had ties to Al Qaeda; Jordan had ties to Al Qaeda; Egypt had ties to Al Qaeda; Yemen had ties to Al Qaeda; Somalia had ties to Al Qaeda; Saudi Arabia had ties to Al Qaeda; the various Gulf monarchies had ties to Al Qaeda; Iran had ties to Al Qaeda; Pakistan had ties to Al Qaeda; Indonesia, the Philippines, North Korea and several of the former Soviet satellites under Muslim rule had ties to Al Qaeda.
But not Iraq.
The Sound Of Settled Science
“It is clear to me that those who espouse and promote acceptance of the “killer AGW” scenario are highly threatened by serious auditing of the surface record and the network used to obtain it. I have been in both academe and industry, with a career spanning 25 years. I am responsible for world wide efforts with budgets well into the millions. I can well recognize when someone is trying to hide poorly done, low quality science. In this case, I smell blood.“
Ouch
But let’s be real here. The fact is, Hillary was wearing a fairly low cut summer top. She was not displaying cleavage, as the shot on Drudge indicates. Someone else wearing the same outfit might have done. But Hillary Clinton does not have cleavage to display. Period. Indeed, Hillary never forgave her mother-in-law, Virginia Kelly for pointing this out decades ago to the young Bill Clinton, a cleavage man if ever there was one.
Why Minivan Drivers Rule The World
Hey boys – mind looking up from your beers for a second so I can draw something to your attention?
If you – meaning “you” in the 18 – 30 male demographic – could rouse the sense to haul your asses to the polling booth in meaningful percentages, you might find yourselves with the political clout that helps prevents these legislative assaults on your property and liberty;
Police in Canada’s most populous province have the right to seize and destroy any car that has been modified for street racing, Ontario’s top prosecutor claims.
“If we can establish someone has parts and they’re juicing up their car — obviously for the purpose of street racing — then we can seize those vehicles,” Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant said Wednesday, according to the Canadian Press.
“We will seize it and you will never see it again. We will crush your car, we will crush the parts.”
“We don’t need to wait until that car hits the road fully loaded,” he said, adding that modified cars are as dangerous as explosives, capable of causing catastrophic damage.
Mr. Bryant was also an architect of Ontario’s recent pit bull ban, which was designed to “protected from the menace” of “dangerous dogs,” which he characterized as “nothing but a loaded weapon waiting to go off.”
Otherwise, get used to that squeeze of nanny’s hand on your testicles. She ain’t nearly done with you yet.
John Edwards
The Only Real Mystery
Is why something like this hasn’t happened long ago;
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I guess in a way, it has.
Graphic video. More here.
And thoughts I can’t help but agree with.
While the tragedy is profoundly distressing, it is even more depressing to realize that the deaths of these men were as pointless as the story they were covering.
Four good men lost their lives because unimaginative television news directors over the years have come to prize live video collected with expensive toys over stories characterized by greater subtlety and significance.
No question.