Dealing with the political realities in both Washington and the country at large, the Administration is subtly but clearly beginning to revamp its rhetoric on Iraq. While still stressing that there will be no timetable for withdrawal, the President is now going beyond the generalities offered in the past to lay down specific goals to be achieved by the civilian and military elements in Iraq before the US could safely begin to dramatically draw down its forces.

The White House said that the strategy to be outlined Wednesday was not new, but that it had never been assembled into a single unclassified document. As the 27-page booklet was described by administration officials, much of it sounded like a list of goals for Iraq’s military, political and economic development rather than new prescriptions on how to accomplish the job.

The Pentagon now spends $6 billion a month to sustain the American military presence in Iraq. A senior administration official said Mr. Bush’s ultimate goal, to which he assigned no schedule, is to move to a “smaller, more lethal” American force that “can be just as successful.”

It is unclear how much of that vision Mr. Bush will explicitly describe Wednesday, in the first of four speeches about the Iraqi transition that he plans to give before the election of a long-term Iraqi government on Dec. 15.

Why the Times chooses to complain that there are no “new prescriptions on how to accomplish the job” of building up the Iraqi civilian and military is a mystery. Surely achieving these goals is almost totally dependent on the Iraqis themselves. We can train the forces to the best of our abilities but as much as working toward a stable, democratic government, it will be the Iraqis themselves who set the pace, not Americans.

That pace is quickening as this AP report points out:

Lt. Col. Fred Wellman, a spokesman in Baghdad for the U.S. command that is responsible for the training and equipping of Iraqi security forces, said approximately 130 Iraqi army and special police battalions are fighting the insurgency, of which about 45 are rated as “in the lead,” with varying degrees of reliance on U.S. support.

The exact numbers are classified as secret, but the 45 figure is about five higher than the number given on Nov. 7 at a briefing by Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who previously led the training mission. It is about 10 higher than the figure Gen. Petraeus offered at a Pentagon briefing on Oct. 5.

An Iraqi battalion usually numbers between 700 and 800 soldiers.

As another measure of progress, Col. Wellman said about 33 Iraqi security battalions are now in charge of their own “battle space,” including parts of Baghdad. That figure was at 24 in late October. Col. Wellman said it stood at three in March.

Also, American forces have pulled out of 30 “forward operating bases” inside Iraq, of which 16 have been transferred to Iraqi security forces. The most recent and widely publicized was a large base near Tikrit, which U.S. forces had used as a division headquarters since shortly after the fall of Baghdad in April 2003.

Subtly changing the focus of their rhetoric on Iraq is an acknowledgment that the constant hammering by Democrats on the Administration’s war policies are beginning to have an effect outside of Washington. Even the President’s strongest supporters have been urging him to clarify what would constitute victory in Iraq since, as seems likely, the terrorists and insurgents will continue to oppose the Iraqi government for years to come. By listing clear and achievable goals for the Iraqi government and military, the Administration is; 1) reasserting dominance over Congress when it comes to guiding the war effort; and 2) attempting to steer the focus of debate on the war away from the cut and run crowd and toward a clear prescription for victory.

There may be those who will be unsatisfied with the President’s speech in that he will stop short in saying that all terrorists in Iraq must be destroyed before America draws down its forces significantly. The problem, according to this report written by two respected Army analysts, is that scenario is totally unrealistic:

In their new 60-page report, veteran Middle East scholar Terrill and Crane, director of the Army Military History Institute, say a U.S. troop presence in Iraq probably cannot be sustained more than three years further. Meantime, they write:
—’‘It appears increasingly unlikely that U.S., Iraqi and coalition forces will crush the insurgency prior to the beginning of a phased U.S. and coalition withdrawal.’’
—’‘It is no longer clear that the United States will be able to create (Iraqi) military and police forces that can secure the entire country no matter how long U.S. forces remain.’’
—And ‘’the United States may also have to scale back its expectations for Iraq’s political future,’’ by accepting a relatively stable but undemocratic state as preferable to a civil war among Iraq’s ethnic and religious factions.

‘’U.S. vital interests have never demanded a democratic state in Iraq before 2003,’’ they note

What kind of democracy we leave behind will be determined by how successful the various factions in Iraq are at working together. The amazing thing is that to date, every deadline set for the Iraqis to move forward with elections and writing the constitution has been met. Expectations have been exceeded which makes the pessimism in that report ring a little hollow. Nevertheless, there will come a time where our very presence becomes a zero sum game, when American troops are actually fueling a dying insurgency that could better be handled by Iraqi forces. That, of course, is Bush’s goal. The trick will be in recognizing when that point is reached and leave Iraq to continue the decades long process of building a peaceful, democratic society.

I don’t know what it is lately, but I’ve been neglecting my duties as a member of the Watchers Council. Here are the results from November 18:

Council

1. Let’s Discuss Bush Derangement Syndrome Again by Dr. Sanity.

T2. Questioning Their Patriotism by The Glittering Eye.

T2. The Untouched Hot Potato by Gates of Vienna (Get well soon, D.!)

4. My own heartfelt tribute to my dad’s service in WW II: Remembering an Honorable Man

Non Council

1. Attention GOP Leadership: by the Anchoress.

2. The J. Patrick Buchanan Memorial Library for Failed Prophets of Doom by Varifrank.

And here are the results from last week’s vote:

Council

1. Acute Senatitis by Gates of Vienna.

2. What Would Winning the War Over the Courts Be Like? by New World Man.

Non Council:

1. Murtha’s War by Done with Mirrors.

2. Just a Yellow Woman Doing a White Man’s Job by Michelle Malkin.

There! Done…and Done. Now go here and see how you too can become a member of the Watchers Council since we’ve just had an opening as a result of the retirement of E-Claire, a charter member of the Council and great writer. She will be missed.

And if you’d like to participate in the Council, see instructions here.

Well, this is more like it. This appears to be the kind of hard data so sorely lacking in the debate over whether or not man is making a significant impact on levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere:

Researchers have recovered a nearly two-mile-long cylinder of ice from eastern Antarctica that contains a record of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane—two potent and ubiquitous greenhouse gases—spanning the last two glacial periods. Analysis of this core shows that current atmospheric concentrations of CO2—380 parts per million (PPM)—are 27 percent higher than the highest levels found in the last 650,000 years.

Evidently, the levels of CO2 have remained remarkably stable in Antarctica during this period – so much so that the spike generated by what one can only conclude as human activity over the last 100 years sticks out like a sore thumb.

I found this nugget of information about methane levels equally interesting:

This record also seems to show that the rise in methane levels in the last 10,000 years—thought by some to be a result of human agriculture—could simply be the result of natural variability in the decomposition of plants in boreal forests and wetlands.

Domesticated livestock as an agent for rising methane levels has been a cornerstone for many models involving dramatic warming scenarios. The apparent disconnect between human activity and rising methane levels doesn’t necessarily discredit the science in those models but it does obviate the political choice of committing economic suicide in order to avoid catastrophe.

So one part of the global warming debate could be settled; man has indeed had a significant impact on levels of CO2 in the atmosphere – if in fact the data holds up to scrutiny. If it does, the obvious follow up question is what exactly that means when we talk about earth’s changing climate.

The sad fact is that modeling climate based on CO2 in the atmosphere is a guessing game at this point. Here’s Iain Murray:

But the more we learn about the climate, the more it is clear that our knowledge is just scratching the surface. The National Research Council, for instance, last year issued a complex but fascinating report that spelled out that we know very little about the various “forcings” on our climate system beyond the effect of greenhouse gases. It also pointed out that the global temperature metric may not be the best signal as to what is going on with the climate. If the scientific discovery process can be likened to a police investigation, then focusing policy attention on greenhouse gases is akin to finding a murder victim in a house with a broken window and picking up a usual suspect whose modus operandi involves breaking windows. Unwise though it may seem to those who are convinced they’ve got the right man, much more investigation is needed.

Indeed, I’ve had many an argument with Kyoto proponents who say something along the line that “it’s common sense” that human activity has generated increased levels of CO2. Don’t give me common sense – show me the science! Now that there is some hard scientific data, policy makers have some decisions to make.

Will this revive the apparently moribund Kyoto agreement? Not hardly. Even Tony Blair knows that Kyoto is a dead issue:

We also have to recognise that while the Kyoto Protocol takes us in the right direction, it is not enough. We need to cut greenhouse gas emissions radically but Kyoto doesn’t even stabilise them. It won’t work as intended, either, unless the US is part of it. It’s easy to take frustrations out on the Bush Administration but people forget that the Senate voted 95-0 against Kyoto when Bill Clinton was in the White House.

We have to understand as well that, even if the US did sign up to Kyoto, it wouldn’t affect the huge growth in energy consumption we will see in India and China. China is building close to a new power station every week. They need economic growth to lift hundreds of millions out of poverty but want to grow sustainably. We have to find a way, as a start, to help them.

In fact, they may be burying the rotting carcass of Kyoto in Canada as we speak:

The United Nations conference that began yesterday in Montreal and will stretch on for nearly two weeks will fail in its aim: to devise a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

That does not matter; in fact, it is the best outcome. Kyoto has been an extraordinary piece of work. A treaty that its most important signatories have found impossible to meet, and which has changed behaviour very little, has still become a resonant global symbol.

The best way forward now is not a “successor” to Kyoto, which covers the years until 2012. Another treaty that attempted to set fixed targets for cutting emissions could be economically very damaging — in the unlikely event that countries ever reached agreement.

Hat tip to Clive Davis who also points to this little tidbit of information regarding emission levels of non-signatories to Kyoto:

Although the US and Australia have pulled out of the Kyoto process, their emissions have risen less than some nations which remain within the treaty.

If Kyoto is dead but at the same time there is a body of solid scientific evidence that CO2 levels are rising to historic levels, what is to be done? The article by Mr. Murray that is linked above details what Mr. Blair is doing:

It is clear, therefore, that new thinking is necessary to solve this seemingly intractable problem. The old nostrums of targets and timetables must give way. Tony Blair has therefore asked Sir Nicholas Stern, head of the Government Economic Service, to conduct a review of the economics of climate change, specifically:

• The implications for energy demand and emissions of the prospects for economic growth over the coming decades, including the composition and energy intensity of growth in developed and developing countries;

• The economic, social and environmental consequences of climate change in both developed and developing countries, taking into account the risks of increased climate volatility and major irreversible impacts, and the climatic interaction with other air pollutants, as well as possible actions to adapt to the changing climate and the costs associated with them;

The key here is trying to uncouple rising energy use and economic growth. Is such a thing possible? It has been an article of faith that there is a direct correlation between the two and that you can’t have growth without a concomitant rise in energy usage. Realistically, only a pitifully small amount of that energy can be in the form of renewable sources like solar or aeration (wind) devices. The reason is that inefficiency of both resources. Unless we are willing to launch a massive solar collecting satellite into space, the best we can hope for here on earth is to garner about 5% of the 3% of the sun’s energy that reaches earth’s surface. And generating energy via wind power is equally problematic given the vagaries of the wind in most places on the planet.

Other renewables like geo-thermal or wave technologies are also dependent on location. Only nuclear energy holds the promise of reducing fossil fuel emissions significantly. But nuclear power presents its own set of political and technological problems that for the foreseeable future, takes that controversial energy source off the table.

That leaves fossil fuels and the problem of CO2 emissions. We can burn them cleaner but at what cost economically? And in the end, is there anything we can do that would make a difference?

The jury is still out on many of these questions. But the realization that we are indeed having an impact on the level of CO2 in the atmosphere is a significant step in our understanding of the forces at work in shaping our future climate.

Courtesy of Beth at My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy, (Beautiful, brilliant, bitchy – but in a Maureen “O’Hara vs. John Wayne in The Quiet Man sort of way), we have the ultimate contrarian antidote to the madness that has become the Weblog Awards. Beth calls her anti-blog prize the 2005 BadBlog Awards.

First, let me say that Paul at Wizbang, who puts an extraordinary amount of effort into the Weblog Awards, is doing a great service to blogs by putting on this contest. My beef is not with him but rather the attitude of some bloggers (and they know who they are) who hit their readers every damn day during the voting with a post pleading for you to vote for them. It gets to the point I stop visiting those sites just because I get sick of having to scroll past that twaddle.

But leave it to our Beth to give us the perfect antidote for such self absorption. Here are a few of the award categories:

Most self-worshiping blogger

Worst Blog Design/Template

Come to think of it, yours truly fits perfectly into three or four of those categories. Good thing no one reads this site. Otherwise, I may end up being nominated for “Worst Blog Fight,” or perhaps “Worst Blog Post,” or perhaps even “Blogger who takes himself much too seriously” (see left sidebar for every single post ever written on this site).

Be that as it may, I thought I’d take a crack at a few of these categories. You know, run a few names up the flag pole and see if any start waving…or de-linking as the case may be.

MOST SELF WORSHIPING BLOGGER

And the winner is, hands down, James Wolcott. A few bloggers have a caricature of themselves at the top of their blog. But no one has the temerity to actually post a caricature that is so wildly different from what they actually look like. Obviously, Mr. Wolcott slipped the artist an extra $10 (or something much smaller and much more personal) just so that he would ignore the short, stubby, balding, fat faced, jowly person sitting in front of him.

BLOGGER WHO TAKES THEMSELVES MUCH TOO SERIOUSLY

Wolcott would be a finalist there also but I’d have to give the nod to Oliver Willis. “Like Kryptonite to Stupid” doesn’t begin to reveal how banal, how ponderous, and how utterly devoid of humor Oliver is. Not to mention his steadfast belief that people anywhere care what he has to say about anything.

WORST POST OF THE YEAR

Oh my! So many to choose from (including my own that I linked to above). However, this post from Jeff Harrell at Shape of Days qualifies as the worst simply because it is so over the top. The title of the post says it all: “Anyone who uses drugs should be dragged out into the street and beaten slowly to death before a warmly applauding audience.”

WORST RIGHT WING BLOG

This is a toughie. Worst written? Looniest ideas? Most sanctimonious? I’ve got nominees for each. However, for making it two out of three, I have to go with LaShawn Barber. I actually think that she’s got a fine evangelical blog there, but for political commentary (out there) and sanctimony, she can’t be beat.

WORST LEFT WING BLOG

Another toughie. Most ill informed? Least connected to reality? Most anti-American? Oh, let’s just go with Kos and be done with it.

MOST OVERRATED BLOG

This is an easy one. By far and away the most overrated blog on the internet is Duncan Black’s Eschaton. The guy has so many open posts he should probably just hand the keys of his site over to his army of degenerate commenters. He doesn’t blog, he burps.

For a spot-on takedown of his site, goto Ace of Spades and read this post and then goto “November 22” on Ace’s blog and start scrolling. Hysterically funny.

Why not pay Beth a visit and leave your nominees in the comments?

One would think that George Bush would have learned his lesson about appointing people to jobs whose only qualification is how much they froth at the mouth when the word “Republican” is mentioned.

I mean, if the federal government was ever going to put on an Arabian Horse show, I know that Michael Brown would have been the perfect guy I would want on point to shepard that project through to completion. Alas, Mr. Brown was stuck whiling away the hours as Director of FEMA - a position for which he had little aptitude and less experience.

Ditto for Harriet Miers who was perfectly qualified to do something at the Supreme Court – just what I’m not sure. They may have eventually had an opening for “President’s Crony” or some such job that wouldn’t have taxed Ms. Miers’ abilities to the limit.

This is not to say that the President shouldn’t have the right to name whomever he damn well pleases to any position he sees fit. It’s just that this appointment of Paul Bonicelli to be Deputy Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which is in charge of all programs to promote democracy and good governance overseas is a true and total embarrassment:

Bonicelli is dean of academic affairs at Patrick Henry College (PHC) in Purcellville, Virginia, whose motto is: “For Christ and Liberty”. This ultra-fundamentalist institution requires its students and faculty to sign a “statement of faith” declaring that they believe “Jesus Christ, born of a virgin, is God come in the flesh”, “Jesus Christ literally rose bodily from the dead”, and Hell is a place where “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity”.

That’s not all. Patrick Henry College also requires its “science” professors to sign a statement saying they believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible that says the world was created in 6 days. Here is the school’s own statement:

‘Creation. Any biology, Bible or other courses at PHC dealing with creation will teach creation from the understanding of Scripture that God’s creative work, as described in Genesis 1:1–31, was completed in six twenty–four hour days. All faculty for such courses will be chosen on the basis of their personal adherence to this view. PHC expects its faculty in these courses, as in all courses, to expose students to alternate theories and the data, if any, which support those theories. In this context, PHC in particular expects its biology faculty to provide a full exposition of the claims of the theory of Darwinian evolution, intelligent design and other major theories while, in the end, teach creation as both biblically true and as the best fit to observed data.’

I am at a total loss. Anyone who can say with a straight face that the theory of the world being created in 6 24-hour days is “the best fit to observed data” is not only crazy but a living, walking insult to rational thought.

And to make someone like this the Deputy Director of USAID is an insult to the overwhelming majority of the rest of the world that is not Christian. One wonders what a Hindu or Muslim would say if they saw that bit about “all who die outside of Christ shall be confined in conscious torment for eternity.” Kind of puts the kibosh on democracy and good governance if the pagan devils are going to hell anyway, doesn’t it? I mean, why bother being good if being bad is so much more fun? And since they’re going to hell anyway, might as well make the journey a helluva a ride, no?

I am not totally against cronyism as long as the crony being appointed has at least a passing familiarity with what the job is all about. Someone with as narrow a world view as Mr. Bonicelli cannot possibly be the right person for a job that would seem to require an individual with a breadth of experience that would enable them to deal with everyone from raving atheists in the Chinese Politburo to the fanatical Islamists in Saudi Arabia. Someone whose entire intellectual framework is squeezed through the narrowest of prisms – the Bible – would seem ill-suited to promote anything except, well Bible sales.

Perhaps Mr. Bonicelli could inquire whether the Gideons could use some help in promoting readership of the Bible and leave the promotion of democracy to others who are more qualified.

And one note to George Bush: Who ever is sending these nominees your way needs to be fired forthwith. They are making you look ridiculous. And a President cannot afford to look ridiculous.

Welcome to the 23rd edition of the Carnival of the Clueless where bloggers highlight the stupidity of various loons, goons, poltroons, dirty necked galoots and the odd idiotarian whose behavior marks them for entry into the blog slaughterhouse. Taking apart these clueless clodhoppers like a fresh side of beef is part of what makes blogging so much fun, hence the reason for this link fest.

For Cluebat of the Week, there are several nominees whose cluelessness has set them apart from the rest. Some of these turkeys should have been stuffed, dressed, and served up for the Thanksgiving feast:

• Chrissy Matthews for his plea before a student group in Canada to “understand” the beheaders, murderers, bombers, and fascists whose desire to kill us all is outdone by Chrissy’s wish to prostrate himself before them and beg for mercy.

• Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad whose desire for nuclear weapons would be seen as one of the greatest dangers in the history of Western Civilization…if the people responsible for seeing he didn’t get them cared one whit for us, the United States, or the west for that matter.

• CNN for their “X Marks the Spot” reality TV show featuring Vice President Cheney as the one they wished to vote off the island. Unfortunately, it was the network itself who was forced to eat those icky live worms.

• Finishing a close second was former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer who accused the United States of building a base to enable it to attack aliens. No, not aliens from like south of the border and no, the base will not be of this world but on the moon. Perhaps we should retask NASA to point our destructo beams at Canada rather than the alien spacecraft who regularly stop by for a chat with Mr. Hellyer.

All worthy nominees but in the end, since we recently celebrated Thanksgiving, I just had to give the award to University of Texas-El Paso journalism professor Robert Jensen who published an indictment of American society for all the evils we’ve perpetrated on the planet:

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

Professor Jensen prattles on about how truly eeeeevil white people are and how truly eeeeevil America is. He does so by using argument based on falsehoods (the old, discredited Ward Churchill example of the small pox infested blankets) as well as telling lies – or at least demonstrating a cluelessness so breathtaking that one fears for the education of his students. As I point out at the beginning of my takedown:

It is as predictable as the annual September collapse of the Chicago Cubs. Every single holiday in which we seek to celebrate what is good and decent about this country and contemplate all that we should treasure and be thankful for, some lickspittle lefty feels an obligation to point out that we should take the ceremonial sword and open up our midsection to atone for all of the past sins committed by our ancestors.

So for cluelessness above and beyond (not to mention extremely bad manners for posting the article for Thanksgiving) Robert Jensen wins the coveted “Cluebat of the Week” award.

Here are 29 more denizens of Cluebat Land. Start clicking and enjoy!

“Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.”
(P.J. O’Rourke)

Hey P.J.! I see you read Professor Jensen’s article for Thanksgiving.
(Me)

******************************************************************************
AJ at The Strata-Sphere points out a slight discrepancy in conspiracy theories surrounding the Niger forgeries that has escaped the clueless left in their rush to blame Bush for the fake memos.

Gajinbiker has an EU diplomat dead to rights as he administers a ceremonial chop with his samurai sword to the luckless cluebat who has a short memory regarding North Korea’s behavior in the six-party talks.

Blogbuddy Maryhunter at TMH Bacon Bits hands his blog keys to DL who recalls a conversation with left-leaning friend who thinks that profit is a dirty word. Read DL’s expert and passionate defense of the “P” word.

For your dose of Carnival satire this week, visit The Nose on your Face where Buckley sings the praises of Zarqawi for “practicing what he preaches:” Angry Muslims throughout the region can now wear their throwback Zarqawi jerseys with pride. Also check out Duncan Avatar’s hilarious take on a Bush news conference about the “evil galactic empire” that Canadian cluebat Hellyer (link above) referenced in his comments about aliens.

Carnival Pin-up girl and bloggoddess Pamela of Atlas Shrugs is back! Read her take on the most dangerous cluebats on the planet – the Iranians and the MSM who continue to ignore the evidence of the Mad Mullah’s desire to wipe us off the face of the planet.

Can’t mention a bloggoddess without talking about Feisty Republican Whore...or can I? Actually, our intrepid street walker has a heart of gold as well as a pen of poison as she emasculates (further) Elton John for some recent clueless statements.

Jay at Stop the ACLU has the jawdropper of the day as he relates the story of a little girl’s religious faith and her experience with her school. ‘Tis the season to be careful if you’re a Christian.

Gullyborg has a report on the cluelessness of his local TV station as they tried to tell viewers what blogs are all about. The fact that the reporter goes by the nom de news of “Info Babe” should tell you all you need to know.

Adam’s Blog has the skinny on the revelations regarding the non-career of New Mexico governor Bill Richardson as a professional baseball player. Note to all ‘08 Presidential aspirants from both parties: Please check your resume and make sure it is accurate and truthful or you’re going to end up looking as clueless as Richardson.

Minh-Duc of State of Flux has a welcome return post to the Carnival that answers Kevin Drum’s thoughts on class action lawsuits.

Mark Coffey is contemplating which California actor-airhead is more clueless; Rob Reiner or Warren Beatty. Tough call, but Mark nails it.

The folks at the excellent blog A Different River have a post guaranteed to raise your blood pressure. It’s about the cluelessness of the FDA and how bureaucratic fools cause needless suffering.

The Yak is Back! Check out the Yak’s own collection of clueless cretins taken down as only a four-legged relation to camels can.

Here are a couple of links sent in by loyal Carnival readers. First, Rachel sends us this post from Gall and Wormwood (“As warm and human as a thrown knife.“) about what George Galloway has been up to recently. It isn’t good, I can assure you. And Bill Martin from my favorite name for a town – Thunder Bay, Ontario – sends us this shocking piece from the CBC who Bill wonders “How many ways can you not say’terrorist?”

Jimmie K has a great piece on the cluelessness of Washington about illegal immigration. Read it and weep.

Et Tu Bloge wants to know where the oil price conspiracy touted by moonbats is now that the price is falling faster than Warren Beatty’s poll numbers.

Iris Blog is on the case of MSM bias again. After breaking several stories about falsehoods being spread by the NY Times and other news organs about Israel, this piece is shows how “Journalists repeatedly act like students cheating on an exam.”

Here’s a story that is flying under the radar and needs to be brought to the forefront by bloggers. Cao of Cao’s Blog has been relating the story of Jack Idema and his team who fought for America in Afghanistan and are now caught in a bureaucratic tug of war that has them languishing in an Afghanistan prison. It’s a complicated story but well worth your time and effort. The link above is for Cao’s latest on the lies of CBS about their part in the story. You can read the entire story about Task Force Saber 7 here.

Those piquant pachyderms at Elephants in Academia has the ultimate takedown of Chrissy Matthews and his bloviations about America and the Iraq war. Don’t miss their follow-up post as well.

Rhymes with Right has a real head scratcher about so-called “Blue Laws” in the very blue state of Massachusetts and how those laws negatively impact consumers.

Conservathink has a review of Mother Sheehan’s book Not one more Mother’s Child. A sample: “This is the greatest piece of literature I’ve read since I finished The Communist Manifesto, and I recommend it to all progressive-minded individuals. The book is endorsed by Liberal Larry of Blamebush! and The Progressive Democrats of America.
Yep.

Blogfight! Blogfight! It’s Orac vs. Dean Esmay over what actually causes AIDS and AIDS related diseases. All I can say is, keep me out of it…but let me know when science comes up with a definitive answer one way or another.

Me-Ander wonders about cluebat telephone solicitors and how anyone can give their credit card number to a stranger over the phone.

Batya at Blog Free has the story of a coverup involving Israeli policemen and the anti-disengagement protests recently.

Used to be that a Bears-Bucs game generated about as much interest as the National Quilting Bee. The reason being, it was actually more interesting to watch the quilters stitch and sow than endure the ineptitude of the two team’s wildly ineffective offenses. “Three yards and cloud of dust” was a charitable way to describe those games that featured some of the most forgettable quarterbacks in NFL history. I daresay few remember Bob Avellini of the Bears whose job consisted of handing the ball to Hall of Famer Walter Payton and not much else.

All that changed in the 1990’s when Tony Dungy brought defense with a great big “D” to the Bay and propelled the formerly hapless Bucs to one of the premier teams in the league. Most of the games in the last few years have been titanic defensive struggles with Tampa Bay winning 7 out of the last 8 due largely to the running of former Buc Warrick Dunn (now a Falcon) and the human battering ram Mike Alstott whose career has suffered lately from numerous injuries.

Alstott, a product of Joliet Catholic high school outside of Chicago, always killed the Bears with his straight ahead in-your-face style of running. But he has been relegated to 3rd string due to a series of injuries as well as the emergence of Carnell “Cadillac” Williams, a hard running rookie out of Auburn who is coming off his first hundred yard effort in a month at Atlanta. His 652 yards – including 116 yards against the Falcons last week, should make the job of the Bears run stoppers that much more difficult.

As for passing, Chris Simms replaces the injured Brian Griese for the third week in row. Simms is a serviceable NFL quarterback with quick feet but a slow release. The Bears have a chance to get to him if their corners can stick with the Buc’s excellent receiving duo of problem child Joey Galloway and Michael Clayton long enough. Galloway has 7 TD catches while Clayton has started to come alive recently after a slow start. Bears cornerbacks Charles “Peanut” Tillman and Nathan Vasher are both playing with a world of confidence. I consider this the second most interesting match up of the game.

By far the most interesting battle will be between the coaches. No, not their game plans. It’s just that John Gruden is one of the most animated characters in the NFL while Lovie Smith is as calm as a placid mountain lake. Gruden’s facial expressions – toward both the officials and his own players – are entertainment enough to watch the game for that reason alone. At times, he looks like a rabid surfer dude, so young and blonde he is. However, you can’t argue with results. He’s got his Bucs in the Super Bowl hunt once again and he’s doing it with very little offense.

As for the Bears, running back Thomas Jones who rushed for 87 hard-fought yards last week on 25 carries will have have similar problems against the Bucs excellent front seven. But as long as the Bears remain committed to the run, the offense should once again be able to score just enough points to pull out a low scoring win.

The difference may be in who forces more turnovers. One thing about the Bears winning streak has been a surprising lack of turnovers by their defense. Last week they managed two interceptions in the first quarter and that was it. If the Bears can’t do better this week, they will probably end up on the short end of the score.

Tampa is favored by 3 1/2 which sounds about right. Take the points as the Bears will probably win or lose by a field goal in the waning minutes.

The State Department says Hizballah is a terrorist group. So do the Israelis who in the past few days have responded to rocket attacks and infiltrations by the Iranian-supported militia by bombing their positions on the Blue Line. The UN - that’s right, the United Nations – has gone so far as to blame Hizballah for the border trouble, saying that the clashes “were initiated by Hezbollah from the Lebanese side, and which quickly spread along the entire Blue Line.” (HT: John Bolton).

But in Lebanon, a country struggling to build a democracy despite enormous problems, Hizballah is a power center. Holding 23 seats in the 128 seat Lebanese Parliament along with another 23 seats held by supporters of a Hizballah-Amal alliance in the southern part of the country, Hizballah is seen as a protector, a bulwark against “Israeli aggression.” They are also seen as a benevolent social services organization because of their work in building hospitals, clinics, schools, and food banks throughout the south of the country.

During the Syrian occupation, Hizballah and the Shi’ite Amal militia were the only groups allowed to carry arms. They cooperated with Syrian intelligence, acting as proxies in Syria’s low intensity conflict with the Israelis. And lately, they have emerged as a stumbling block to the formation of a government that would unify all the factions and give the “Cedar Revolution” a chance to succeed.

The reason is UN Resolution 1559 that stipulates all sectarian militias be disarmed. Hizballah has refused saying they are the “resistance” to Israeli “aggression” and have earned the right to defend Lebanon as they see fit.

This position is complicating the delicate dance going on between the various factions who came together in the spring and summer to form an unbeatable electoral block that has succeeded in kicking out the Syrians and beginning the process of reforming the constitution. The fact is, there is very little trust between the Future Movement, which is what the broad based coalition of Christians, Shi’ites, Druze, Armenians, and Maronites call themselves and the so-called “Party of God” that receives tens of millions of dollars from Iran:

Those who question Hizbullah’s loyalty to Lebanon must show their credentials first, Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said on Friday in his toughest response yet to critics who believe the resistance acts upon Syrian and Iranian orders. Nasrallah was speaking to a mass rally in Beirut’s southern suburbs, gathered for a funeral procession for the three resistance fighters killed during Monday’s clashes with Israeli troops.

“While encouraging dialog and discussion,” the cleric stressed “the resistance will not tolerate being named a traitor or an agent for foreign countries.”

Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated former Prime Minister, along with the Lebanese Premier Fouad Siniora not only don’t trust Hizballah, but worry about international support if the terrorist group refuses to lay down its arms or incorporate itself into the Lebanese regular army:

Political sources close to these complex relations said Hizbullah believes Hariri’s commitment to the resistance is shaky. A few days ago Hizbullah asked him for a straightforward clarification about his stand toward the resistance. Hariri’s assertion from Curacao Wednesday that the resistance helped free an important part of Lebanese territory and that its disarmament could be achieved only through internal dialog were primarily a response to this message, aimed at appeasing Hizbullah’s worries.

But even these words did not fully convince the resistance, which found them in contradiction with what it has been hearing from Premier Fouad Siniora, particularly his insistence Lebanon cannot confront the international community by refusing to comply with UN Security Resolution 1559.

And herein lies the big trap for America. As much as the PLO, Hizballah has integrated itself into Lebanese society. In the southern part of the country, their writ is law. The central government is tolerated only so far as they support the “resistance.”

And why not? Ordinary people in that part of Lebanon have literally been under the gun for more than a quarter of a century. Clashes between the Israelis and Hizballah (as well as the PLO and Amal) are a regular occurrence. Hizballah is welcomed as both protector and nanny since most of what passes for social programs are administered by representatives of the group. Support for Syria’s occupation was also strongest here for many of the same reasons.

Trying to “disarm” Hizballah and make them work in some kind of constitutional framework is a sticky matter indeed. All depends on the commitment of Hizbullah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah to the democratic process. But is Nasrallah a free agent? Or is he simply a tool of the radicals in Tehran?

One thing is certain; Hizballah favors the destruction of the state of Israel. This, above all else, complicates both its internal relations with some Lebanese factions like the Free Patriotic Movement headed up by General Michael Aoun and some of the more secular oriented groups like Hariri’s Future Movement as well as relations with the EU and the US. The Administration has said that it would welcome a disarmed Hizballah into the Lebanese government although how this can be reconciled with their designation as a terrorist group isn’t clear.

Can any government formed with Hizballah have normal relations with Israel? And a larger question; can there be democracy in any Middle Eastern Country that doesn’t accept Israel’s right to exist?

As long as Israel is out there being portrayed as the bogeyman, demagogues will be able to use the democratic process to come to power and threaten the Jewish state. The resulting reaction by Israel to protect itself will only confirm the worst fears of people who are being led by men whose anti-Israel, anti-western bias generates such hatred. Until it becomes a political liability to use the rhetoric of hate against Israel, there will be men willing to seek power based on that hate.

Real freedom for the people of Lebanon is still an uphill struggle. Immense problems remain regarding a new constitution that would rid itself of the so-called “confessional” system that apportions seats in parliament and political offices based on religion. The problem of disarming Hizballah is almost a sideshow to the real drama being played out between the various actors who represent the parties, the religions, the clans, and the warlords who to this day have yet to figure out how to live together in peace.

Here’s hoping that both the people of Lebanon and the world exhibit patience with this process. We’re going to need it.

I recently wrote an article on NASA’s plans to return to the moon by 2020 using a dual track launch approach, lifting the crew into near earth orbit by using the new Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) and marrying up with a previously launched payload that would include a service module and lunar descent vehicle.

I questioned whether NASA could complete such a project in the planned time frame and within the $104 billion budget they had set for themselves:

This ambitious timetable is a good goal but would seem to be unrealistic. Every major project undertaken by NASA in the past has taken longer to develop than anticipated and cost more than was originally thought. Why should we think they can suddenly get things right on the new crew exploration vehicle?

Would it surprise you to learn that there is a very serious effort underway by private corporations to try and beat NASA at their own game and that they know that they can accomplish a moon mission in less time and for vastly less money than NASA could even dream?

It shouldn’t:

According to SpaceDev’s chief, Jim Benson, the private group has found that a more comprehensive series of missions could be completed in a fraction of the time and for one-tenth of the cost of the NASA estimate.

Each mission, as envisioned by SpaceDev, would position a habitat module in lunar orbit or on the moon’s surface. The habitat modules would remain in place after each mission and could be re-provisioned and re-used, thus building a complex of habitats at one or more lunar locations over time, according to a press statement on the study findings.

Benson also noted: “We are not surprised by the significant cost savings that our study concludes can be achieved without sacrificing safety and mission support.”

These guys are not a bunch of rocket geeks sitting in in their mother’s basement idly wondering what it would be like if they had $10 billion to build a real cool rocket. These are dead serious businessmen who have run the numbers and come up with some startling conclusions:

In outlining their study findings, SpaceDev has blueprinted a conceptual mission architecture and design for a human servicing mission to the lunar south pole – targeted for the period between 2010 and 2015.

The length of stay on the Moon would be seven or more days – depending on cost, practicality and other issues. The SpaceDev study explored a range of technologies that would be needed: hardware that exists now, is currently under development, and proposed technology that NASA or other nations could spearhead, or might be developed by the private sector in time to be incorporated into lunar operations.

The SpaceDev study underscores a key finding: A combination of technology already under development by companies could be combined to create a growing and lasting presence at the Moon at costs significantly lower than those proposed by other organizations.

The reason for setting up at the moon’s south pole is the probability that there is abundant water in the form of ice in that region. Water would be used not only for its potability but for its usefulness in making rocket fuel (by combining oxygen in the water with liquid nitrogen or hydrogen) as well as fuel for rovers and the lunar habitat itself. The water could also be used to supply breathable air for habitat.

Part of NASA’s huge cost is contained in the development of the new CEV which the agency pegs at around $15 billion. And NASA is planning much, much larger payloads so there is a necessity for heavy lift capability not present in the private venture’s plans.

But what is truly exciting about this development is the recognition that a moon mission is doable and affordable. Ten billion dollars for a private sector venture is a lot of money and is probably right on the outside of the envelope where corporations would be willing to invest for such a small initial return on their investment.

But if a way can be found to spread the risk while searching for ways to efficiently exploit the moon’s resources, it may be possible to convince some of the big boys – Boeing, Lockheed, and perhaps even some of the larger mining companies like Kennecott – to climb aboard and get the project off the ground.

We are on the cusp of a transition in the exploration of space between public and private ventures. The flight last year of Burt Ruttan’s Spaceship One was a tiny step forward down a road that will have many starts and stops. The problems ahead for private companies who wish to test the waters in outer space are enormous. Companies will be asked to basically take a leap of faith and invest billions of dollars into ventures with uncertain returns and the real possibility of loss.

But the potential returns down the road are incalculable. Here’s what I wrote after Spaceship One’s historic flight where it was able to claim the $10 million X-Prize:

If there is ever going to be a private sector manned space flight industry, there’s going to have to be some kind of track record for investors to have confidence in. Perhaps the value of space tourism will be to show venture capitalists that a market exists beyond tourism for manned spaceflight. Medical research, metallurgical breakthroughs, even something as pie-in-the-sky as mining asteroids could all be huge moneymakers by the middle of this century. This will not be achieved by government owned space programs which are, by their very nature, “risk averse” but by private companies whose desire to make a profit will lead to the next great leap forward in man’s quest to explore the unknown.

It is as predictable as the annual September collapse of the Chicago Cubs. Every single holiday in which we seek to celebrate what is good and decent about this country and contemplate all that we should treasure and be thankful for, some lickspittle lefty feels an obligation to point out that we should take the ceremonial sword and open up our midsection to atone for all of the past sins committed by our ancestors.

The fact that our “liberal conscience” has the historical knowledge and cognitive abilities of a high school sophomore doesn’t seem to faze the mainstream media who always seem to find room on the editorial pages for their juvenile diatribes. It is just one more example of the disconnect demonstrated by the dissonant left and their childish need for attention.

The holiday of Thanksgiving seems to bring out the worst in these galoots. If we’re not reading about the inequities of capitalism which has ground millions of our fellow citizens under its jackboot, we’re doing the slow burn over some idiot’s interpretation of the historical baggage accrued to the cultural conflict between whites and Native Americans. Sometimes, like this year. we get a twofer.

One indication of moral progress in the United States would be the replacement of Thanksgiving Day and its self-indulgent family feasting with a National Day of Atonement accompanied by a self-reflective collective fasting.

That the world’s great powers achieved “greatness” through criminal brutality on a grand scale is not news, of course. That those same societies are reluctant to highlight this history of barbarism also is predictable.

But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin—the genocide of indigenous people—is of special importance today. It’s now routine—even among conservative commentators—to describe the United States as an empire, so long as everyone understands we are an inherently benevolent one. Because all our history contradicts that claim, history must be twisted and tortured to serve the purposes of the powerful.

This excreable screed, penned by one Robert Jensen who purports to be a professor of journalism, should probably be dismissed as the ravings of an escapee from some lunatic asylum or perhaps the latest statement issued from the Democratic National Committee (some would argue the differences there are insignificant). Nevertheless, a cursory Technorati search revealed the fact that no one has taken the time or effort to contradict this moonbat’s flawed historical interpretation not to mention the outright falsehoods contained in his not-ready-for-high-school essay.

If it’s not too much to ask, can we please not have any more judgments from the left about “moral progress” or the lack thereof made by the United States over the past 200 years or so? The fact is that agitation for both fair and humane engagement of Native Americans as well as the abolitionist movement were both propelled by the most profound religious conservatism in our nation’s history. As historian James Brewer Stewart points out, it was the Second Great Awakening (the first occurring during the early colonial period) that was the catalyst for reformist movements of all stripes:

By stressing the moral imperative to end sinful practices and each person’s responsibility to uphold God’s will in society, preachers like Lyman Beecher, Nathaniel Taylor, and Charles G. Finney in what came to be called the Second Great Awakening led massive religious revivals in the 1820s that gave a major impetus to the later emergence of abolitionism as well as to such other reforming crusades as temperance, pacifism, and women’s rights. By the early 1830s, Theodore D. Weld, William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur and Lewis Tappan, and Elizur Wright, Jr., all spiritually nourished by revivalism, had taken up the cause of “immediate emancipation.”

This basic Christian belief in the value and dignity of every human being that to this day animates religious conservatives has suffered through a revisionism that would make Clio, the Muse of History, weep with anger. While it is true that some Southern preachers took it upon themselves to try and justify slavery via the bible – even to the point that it permanently split many Protestant denominations – the facts are that conservative revivalism played a dominant role in both the abolitionist movement and the efforts to reform government policies toward Native Americans.

Make no mistake. The United States government has much to answer for in its dealings with Native Americans. But a point not answered by Mr. Jensen or any other advocate for the historical revisionism that passes for a critique of the government’s Indian policy is the realization that every single time in the history of human civilization a society that possessed nastier germs, superior organizational skills, and more devastating weaponry came into contact with hunter gatherers, very bad things happened to the berry eaters.

In his controversial Pulitzter Prize winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel, author Jared Diamond asks the question why were the Europeans able to sail across the ocean and conquer (or subdue) Native American tribes in the Americas and not the other way around? The answer, according to Diamond was no inherent inferiority on the part of Native Americans but rather factors relating to the environment such as the flora and fauna that flourished on the Eurasian continent versus the Americas. That, plus the ease of idea diffusion that allowed innovations such as large scale agriculture to sweep across Eurasia with breathtaking speed (historically speaking) as opposed to the problems presented by the geography of the Americas that prevented agriculture from moving much beyond the Incans in South America and the Aztecs in North America until less than 500 years before Columbus’ voyage.

Diamond points out that the more than 3,000 year headstart Europeans had in organizing a civilization based on agriculture was more than enough time to develop superior technologies as well as allow for the mutation of some really nasty bugs so that the contact between indigenous peoples and Europeans was guaranteed to be a catastrophe.

This is true not only of recent history with Europeans subjugating North and South America, but also of the most ancient histories of which we are aware. The Celtic people who colonized much of Europe did not enounter pristine wilderness untouched by the hand of man. They overran much of continental Europe 500 years before the birth of Christ, enjoying the distinction of sacking both Rome and Delphi. And the remnants of their culture was eliminated over the years by a host of conquerers including the Romans and the Saxons.

I daresay there aren’t too many lefties agitating for the return of Ireland and England to the descendants of the Druids.

And while we’re at it, I might point out that recent archeological evidence has pointed to several migrations of peoples from Asia to North America with the last occurring approximately 8,000 years ago.

Anyone wanna guess what happened to those indigenous people before the people we refer to as indigenous actually became “indigenous?”

Mr. Jensen then makes the usual mistake of assuming that since very few choose to feel the kind of personal guilt that he is able to absolve himself of thanks to his humble mea culpa, that the reason must be something sinister; that American history is hidden away in a closet guarded by CIA agents 24 hours a day:

One vehicle for taming history is various patriotic holidays, with Thanksgiving at the heart of U.S. myth-building. From an early age, we Americans hear a story about the hearty Pilgrims, whose search for freedom took them from England to Massachusetts. There, aided by the friendly Wampanoag Indians, they survived in a new and harsh environment, leading to a harvest feast in 1621 following the Pilgrims first winter.

Some aspects of the conventional story are true enough. But it’s also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders. The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Simply put: Thanksgiving is the day when the dominant white culture (and, sadly, most of the rest of the non-white but non-indigenous population) celebrates the beginning of a genocide that was, in fact, blessed by the men we hold up as our heroic founding fathers.

For every pronouncement made by a politician or government official calling for the elimination of Native Americans, I could point to sentiments expressing exactly the oppoiste viewpoint made by others or even that same individual. There is nothing in American life that brought out more schizophrenia – with the possible exception of slavery – than our relations to and feelings about Native Americans. Every American President from Washington to Theodore Roosevelt called for fair and humane treatment of Indians. The fact that they usually fell far short in putting that rhetoric into practice was due to a variety of factors not the least of which the nasty habit Native Americans had of massacring settlers (women and children included) and torturing captives in the most barbarous ways imaginable (even some ways beyond imagining).

If it were a simple matter of “pushing back” against white encroachment, such behavior could be understood if not excused. However, many Native American tribes eagerly insinuated themselves into the politics of empire being played out on the North American continent not by attacking armies but by killing innocents – a tactic guaranteed to bring down reprisals by governments and even individual settlers. Did they believe that their taking sides would grant them immunity from the anger and revenge of whites?

If Jensen wants to blame the entire white race for the tragedy that occurred during the clash of cultures with Native Americans, then I would simply quote that great line from the movie Gettysburg in which crusty Seargant Buster Killrean says “Any man who judges by the group is a peawit.” The kind of deterministic interpretation of history that allows for condemning an entire race of people for the actions of their ancestors – especially when that interpretation leaves out inconvenient facts and analysis – should be relegated with the rest of Marxian and Hegelian claptrap to the ash heap where it belongs.

And the idea that “between 95 and 99 percent” of Native Americans were the victims of genocide is laughable. Unless one wants to posit the notion that the smallpox virus should be hauled into the World Court and charged with crimes against humanity, Jensen’s idiotic statement should be revealed as either a bald faced lie or a comical lack of historical knowledge not to mention a breathtaking minimization of what genocide really is.

The overwhelming majority of Native American deaths following the landing of Columbus – perhaps as some have said in the 75-90% range – were the result of contracting some of the nastiest diseases on the planet for which the tribes had absolutely no immunity. Guenter Lewey:

About all this there is no essential disagreement. The most hideous enemy of native Americans was not the white man and his weaponry, concludes Alfred Crosby, “but the invisible killers which those men brought in their blood and breath.” It is thought that between 75 to 90 percent of all Indian deaths resulted from these killers.

And most of those deaths did not occur as a direct result of contact with whites but rather because of the remarkable trade network operating on the North American continent long before Columbus’ trip was even imagined.

Some tribes were trading empires whose geographic breadth put to shame just about anything Europe could offer. At the time that Marco Polo was writing about the marvels in far away China, Native American tribes in Michigan and Minnesota were trading copper for sea shells from both coasts. It was this far flung trading network that caused diseases like small pox, measles, influenza, whooping cough, diphtheria, typhus, bubonic plague, cholera, and scarlet fever to spread like wild fire among Indian populations, wiping out entire cultures that had existed for thousands of years in a matter of months.

By using the term “genocide” to describe what can only be termed a tragedy of history brands Jensen and his ilk as deliberate falsifiers. In order to make a political point, they are willing to eschew reason, logic, and history itself. And by applying the incendiary sin of “genocide” to Europeans who had no clue as to how disease was spread or even what a virus or a germ was – cheapens the actual genocide practiced against Jews, Armenians, and others whose deliberate murder was carried out for the expressed purpose of eliminating their seed from the planet.

After saying all of this, it is a legitimate question to ask just what the US government is guilty of when talking about the clash of cultures which resulted in so many needless deaths on both sides? Certainly the sins of ommission far outweigh those of commission. It was never officially United States policy to exterminate all Indians everywhere. There was throughout American history a belief that Indians would be better off if they acted like whites. In that sense, the worst one can say is that the US government wished to wipe traditional Native American culture off the map. Trying to turn hunter-gathering nomads into farmers was pure folly but it hardly qualifies as genocide.

Of course, the history of treaty violations by the government is rife with both perfidity on the part of government and a tragic misunderstanding of Native American tribal structure. There were numerous instances of the government signing a treaty with some tribal elements who would agree to cede land while other chiefs refused the terms of such treaties. The predictable outcome of such misunderstandings led to predations on both sides.

Yes, there is blood on the hands of the US government when it comes to their dealings with Native American tribes throughout our history. But is Moonbat Jensen correct? Is this reason enough to turn Thansgiving into some kind of New Age Tantric fast ritual where we drink guana juice and walk across hot coals to atone for our sins?

Mr. Jensen is free to do whatever he wants on Thanksgiving. But the idea of collective guilt is both morally and intellectually corrupt. It reveals a mind that substitutes platitudes for serious thinking and a jaw dropping ignorance of the facts. For this, the good professor should delve into a little atonement politics himself. To do so, however, one would need the ability for introspection, something that the professor and his ilk have proven that they have neither the temperment or the depth of intellect to practice.