TigerHawk

Four months ago I figuratively shivered at the thought of John Edwards at the helm of the Justice Department. Jonah Goldberg feels the same draft.

What a horror show that would be.

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The National Climatic Data Center's April report came out yesterday, and it contains the usual interesting nuggets. Key point:

Based on preliminary data, the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature was the thirteenth warmest on record for April and the January-April year-to-date period ranked twelfth warmest.

The year is a third done and it does not yet rank in the top ten. This is a particularly sharp drop from the same period last year, which was the hottest on record in the Northern Hemisphere.

As has generally been the case, Eurasia has experienced the warming climate more tangibly than North America (a condition which I believe explains much of the difference in American and European attitudes about climate change). For example, there was a huge disparity in snowcover across the Northern Hemisphere in April.

[T]he mean Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent during April 2008 was below average. Similar to the month of March, snowfall across the Northern Hemisphere was variable during April. The Northern Hemisphere had the 8th least snow cover extent on record....

Across North America, snow cover for April 2008 was above average, the 9th largest April extent since satellite records began in 1967....

Eurasia's snow cover extent during April 2008 was below average. This was the least snow cover extent over the 41-year historical period for April, surpassing the previous least snow cover extent set in 1990.

Finally, the sea ice data were interesting, especially given this week's ruling by the Department of the Interior that the polar bear is endangered.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the April 2008 Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent, which is measured from passive microwave instruments onboard NOAA satellites, was below the 1979-2000 mean, but greater than the previous four years. This was the eighth least April sea ice extent on record. The past four years had the least April sea ice extent since records began in 1979, with 2007 having the least April sea ice extent on record.

But wait, the sea ice has been increasing in the Southern Hemisphere:

Meanwhile, the April 2008 Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent was much above the 1979-2000 mean. This was the largest sea ice extent in April (17.5 percent above the 1979-2000 mean) over the 30-year historical period, surpassing the previous record set in 1982 by 4.1 percent. Sea ice extent for April has increased at a rate of 2.5 percent per decade.

The trends are no less interesting:

Maybe we should transplant a few polar bears to Antarctica, just to be on the safe side. Although I suppose the penguins wouldn't appreciate it.

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As previously reported, I flew home from Seattle on the first flight this morning. I drove directly to a conference room where I have been ever since and expect to remain for at least another 12 hours. It is hard to believe that just yesterday morning I was standing in front of the first Starbucks ever looking at this view of the harbor and the Olympic Mountains beyond:

That scene and the aforementioned fountainhead Starbucks were about a mile from my hotel (up near Swedish Hospital), so I walked down the hill and up again all before about 7 am. The streets were essentially empty of cars, so being an Easterner I skipped merrily along with little regard for the status of the pedestrian Walk/Don't Walk signs.

Then I noticed that the few other peds were just standing there waiting for the "Walk" signal to come on even when there was not a car in sight. Not surprisingly, they all looked at me like I was a middle-aged feminist at an Obama rally, so I also stopped violating the crosswalk lights.

When I landed I reported all of this to a friend of mine who claims to hate Seattle -- how can anybody actually hate Seattle? -- and she said "Of course, Seattle is basically just a suburb of Canada."

Like that explained it. Although it sort of does.

Anyway, other than in Washington, DC -- which back in the day raised money by assigning cops in unmarked clothes to write jay-walking tickets -- I've always thought of crosswalk signals as purely advisory. Not the command "Don't Walk," but more like "probably not a good idea to walk, because the cars have a green light." That is certainly the rule in any city in which I have lived or worked, including both New York and Chicago. In Seattle, though, pedestrians comply with crosswalk signals almost to the extent that motorists obey traffic lights. You know, they wait for the light to change even when there is neither a car nor a cop in sight. It is bizarre, and really quite un-American.

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That we don't know.

"Firms are hunkering down," Bernanke said at a conference in Chicago today. "They have at least partially replaced the losses with new capital raising, but not entirely."

Hmmm.
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One of the arguments posited by proponents of US withdrawal from Iraq has been that it stretches our resources in such a fashion that it reduces our commitment to, and therefore our ability to succeed in Afghanistan.

I happen to think that's bunk. First of all, it's a hypothesis. Fine. No problem. But there is no evidence to suggest it's correct. It should therefore not be accepted as gospel. And we won't in fact know until years from now.

Let me posit a counter-hypothesis. Being in Iraq and Afghanistan makes our effort against Al Qaeda more effective, not less. It does so because we have superior resources than our enemy does, and it forces Al Qaeda to stretch its resources. Furthermore, since General Petraeus mounted a new counterinsurgency strategy, we have imposed a far greater cost on all of our regional enemies, including Al Qaeda, Iranian proxies led by Sadrist Shiite militias, and even Iranian forces directly committed to Iraq.

This is one war comprised of several theaters. Our presence surrounds Iran and breaks Al Qaeda into several pieces, where they cannot consolidate. Our resources are in fact superior than that of our enemy, and by working closely with the leadership and military of Iraq and Afghanistan, we multiply our strength. Finally, where necessary, Israeli military force has been brought to bear upon Syria and Hezbollah, further stretching and costing enemy resources.

And we still have most of our ground forces and entire air and naval capability in reserve. So please spare me the "we are stretched" argument. It doesn't hold water to me. Is this demanding and does it impose sacrifice upon our men and women overseas? Of course. Is it dangerous? Yes indeed. But this is what the military does, and they are absolutely amazing in their capacity to deliver. Certainly better than our brilliant legislators.
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I'm on my way home from Seattle this morning on a really packed plane. Indeed, I cannot remember when I have been on a plane that was not packed. This business about the airlines running at high load factors is really very painful. If it is this way when the economy is soft, what is it going to be like when we return to some decent growth?

We need more airports or to expand the ones we have. It is time to expand Trenton/Mercer County to take regular jet service, Yardley suburbanites be damned!

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According to at least one organization that ranks these things, the United States is the world's most competitive economy for the 15th year running. That said, its streak is in jeopardy:

The United States topped world competitiveness rankings for the 15th straight year, but its economy is showing the same signs of weakness that sank booming Japan in the early 1990s, according to an annual survey released Thursday.

Asian tigers Singapore and Hong Kong ranked just behind the U.S., as they did last year. Switzerland jumped two places to fourth, while Luxembourg rounded out the top five most competitive national economies, said the Lausanne, Switzerland-based, IMD business school, publisher of the World Competitiveness Yearbook.

Of course, the second, third, fourth and fifth place contenders are not actually real countries. Three are essentially city-states, and Switzerland is a fairy-tale land that has gotten rich free-riding on global conflict (OK, that was a bit harsh, but you know what I mean). The first large countries on the list are Australia and Canada, and while they punch above weight in the Anglosphere even they have 10% or less of our population. So we have a long way to fall before we are overtaken in this survey, at least, by a country of any real size.
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Name that party! Reuters:

Ohio Attorney General Marc Dann, who led investigations into companies blamed for the state's subprime mortgage mess, resigned under a cloud on Wednesday after admitting to an affair with a female staff member.

"Unfortunately, it is now clear that the last step I must take to fix these problems is to resign as attorney general effective immediately," Dann told reporters.

In addition to Dann's relationship with a member of his staff, his office was roiled by sexual harassment claims.

Also, local media reported that authorities staged a raid on the attorney general's offices on Wednesday, carting away documents as part of an undisclosed investigation.

Obvious answer.
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Friends and family know that I'll always grab an opportunity to spend, or kill, some time in a Starbucks doing work or blogging or just reading. Now, in towns where there are a lot of European and Japanese cars with "Support Your Local Everything" bumper stickers the self-consciously hip disapprove of Starbucks in roughly the same tone they use to deny they watch television, but I do not seek the approval of these people. Starbucks is a great company that has transformed the American public space for the better; where before there were really only the corner tavern and the (now largely vanished) drug store counter, today there is Starbucks, a comfortable place for conversation or to be alone in a crowd. So I've been going to Starbucks virtually every day since one opened across from my apartment in Chicago in the early '90s, and expect to keep doing so.

Anyway, I am Seattle for one day. I popped awake at 5:30 or so, and decided to make the haj to the original, foundational Starbucks in the Pike Street market. I was not disappointed. Not only did it retain its modest, pre-corporate appearance, but it has preserved the original mildly NSFW sign.

There were no pastries inside, and no chairs to sit on.

The original Starbucks was so ordinary that nobody would have believed it would be the fountainhead of a new American public space. That idea did not spring naturally from high-quality coffee or naked mermaid breasts. No, it took hard-core corporate marketing to do that.

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Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama. Are you listening to the people who are fighting this war?

No one ever gave a tip to me when I was buttoned up. I never had an interaction with an Iraqi in an armored Humvee with the doors closed and the windows up. (We didn't have grenade screens in those days. Heck, most of my Humvees had CANVAS doors, if they had doors at all.!)

Part of the solution is going to lie not in making our vehicles invincible. You CAN'T make it invincible to a triple stacked anti-tank mine.

So don't even try.

Rather, the real solution to defeating this measure is not going to lie with the vehicles at all, but outside them.

Dismount.

Get into the communities. Leverage Iraqi contacts.

Yes, we're doing that already, as much as we can. But these knuckledragging trogs in Congress are focusing on the wrong things. And the ignorant press is dragging us along with them, and damaging the war effort, by pulling us into a defensive mentality.

The insurgency will not be defeated by putting an extra armor on our vehicles. The insurgency will be defeated by dismounts. Dismounts out there engaging with the Iraqi people and collecting real-time intelligence.

And THAT is the effort the Media should focus on. THAT is the effort that Congress should focus on.

Where is all the heat forcing colonels to jump through their a**es to develop HUMINT? There isn't much. All anyone wants to hear about is armor this, and armor that.

F**k the armor. Get out and clobber the enemy, and let HIS sorry a** wish he had more armor.

Get back on offense. Close with and destroy the enemy.

Victory in war is rarely possible without incurring risk; but in an endeavor where casualties are an expected cost of success, the proper focus is not upon limiting risk but upon maximizing progress:

"One day, everything changes. The patrols are all in Humvees and they travel fast. The soldiers all look at us with suspicion from the Humvees and we do not understand why. Then I hear of Wahabi in the neighborhood, but I do not report them to the patrols – I cannot, the Humvees travel fast and no one comes to my house any more. More and more, we hear shooting down the street, and one morning a bomb destroys the market where I work. I could get another job in another market, but that market might also be destroyed by a bomb. Only a few Wahabi are where I live, but there is no one to tell – no patrols, no police.

"So I come back to the Air Force. I come back because I want to get the Wahabi out of my neighborhood, get them out of Iraq.

"One month ago, the patrols are back, and they are walking, not in Humvees. Different soldiers from the soldiers in the first patrols, but behaving like them – very courteous, very watchful.

"When the patrol knocks on my door, I say, 'Please come in – I would like some lubricant for my pistol.' The patrol leader looks at me with a funny look, then he smiles, then they all come in and drink tea and I draw a map of where the Wahabi are..."

Of course, casualties are up again. And we all know what that means.

Don't we? Of course we do.
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More highly suspect news from those 'unverifiable sources':

Violence in Iraq’s Kirkuk province has dropped by 70 percent, and coalition and Iraqi forces have “virtually destroyed” al-Qaida in Iraq in the region, the commander of the U.S. brigade combat team in the area said May 12.

Army Col. David Paschal, commander of 1st Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, said that as security improves in the strategic northern province, changes are happening in the economy and in governance that help cement the security progress in place.

...The brigade arrived in September 2007 and has killed or captured 20 high-value targets. U.S. soldiers also captured 63 “persons of interest” in the area, the colonel said. Enemy activity began trending down in August and remains low, he added.

None of this would be possible without the improvement in the Iraqi security forces, Paschal said. Iraqi police are responsible for maintaining security in Kirkuk, a city of roughly 800,000 people. The 15th Brigade of the 4th Iraqi Army Division conducts independent, intelligence-driven operations outside the city. The Iraqi army unit has also conducted joint operations with the fledgling Iraqi air force.

The Sons of Iraq program has been a cornerstone to security in the region, he said, noting that 400 men who were part of the Sons of Iraq program from the brigade’s Arab areas are graduating from two months of police training this week. They’ll be reassigned to the outer district on the western side of the province.

With more security, the Iraqi people are feeling more confident, Paschal said.

“The information and actionable intelligence that they provide has grown exponentially,” he said. “That actionable intelligence is in the form of the turning of caches, location of [roadside bombs] and, in many cases, instances of insurgent or terrorist leaders throughout the province,” he said.

Personally, I question the timing. Looks like another transparent attempt to distract the American public from casualties that are spiraling out of control in Iraq:

The newspapers are predictably filled with articles about how 52 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq last month – the highest toll since September. Iraqi civilian casualties are also said to be at the highest level since August. These losses are being used to cast aspersions on claims of progress in Iraq.

Even one death is too many and 52 deaths is tragedy multiplied 52-fold. But let's keep some perspective. As the icasualties.org website makes clear, for better or worse, April was still one of the lighter-casualty months during the long war in Iraq.

More important, casualties cannot be looked at in a vacuum. A spike in casualties could be a sign that the enemy is gaining strength. Or it could be a sign that tough combat is under way that will lead to the enemy's defeat and the creation of a more peaceful environment in the future.

The latter was certainly the case with the casualty spike during the summer of 2007. (More than a hundred soldiers died each month in April, May and June.) Those losses were widely denounced as evidence that the surge wasn't working, but in fact they were proof of the opposite.

At the time, troops were engaged in hard fighting as part of Operation Phantom Thunder that eventually cleared most terrorists out of Anbar, Baghdad, Diyala, Babil and other provinces, leading to dramatic reductions in violence over the last year (more than 80% before the recent fighting).

The latest increase in casualties is the result of another coalition offensive: Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's decision to break the grip of militias in Basra. At first the results did not look promising: Iraqi troops were rushed in without adequate preparation, and shortly after the March 25 offensive began appeared stymied in their battles against the Mahdist Army. Mr. Maliki seemed to agree to an Iranian-brokered cease-fire with Moqtada al Sadr that left the Mahdists in control of much of the city. But as April progressed it became clear that the results of the initial clashes were more beneficial than most (including me) had initially suspected.

Iraqi security forces have not suspended their operations in Basra. In fact, since the "cease-fire," they have continued to increase their area of control. An April 25 article by a London Times correspondent who visited Basra finds: "Raids are continuing in a few remaining strongholds but the Iraqi commander in charge of the unprecedented operation is confident that his forces will soon achieve something that the British military could not – a city free from rogue gunmen."

Infidels! May the Fleas of a Thousand Camels infest their jockey shorts for all eternity. As is well known to all well-informed citizens, these highly unnecessary reminders of what U.S. and Iraqi forces have accomplished are a distraction from the real issue, which is that war causes great suffering but never achieves anything of value.

- Cassandra
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I don't know about you, but I'm sick to death of this deeply unpopular war.

- Cassandra
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Palestinians in the Gaza strip are phonebanking for Barack Obama. Presumably this is a rogue operation, at least as separate from the Obama campaign as, say, MoveOn.org, but still. Not helpful.

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Since I'm lowering the collective IQ of this blog today, here's a little something that pretty much destroyed my lunch hour:

With Mother’s Day so close, I started thinking about how so many people make the mistake of buying inappropriate lingerie for their mothers.

The InterTubes are not to be entered into unadvisedly. Savor the idiocy.

- Cassandra
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Since TH is out of pocket today, obviously someone must step up to the plate. All I can say is, never dare me.

Recently, some very perverse individuals were unable to get their minds out of the gutter when presented with a beautiful and natural celebration of girlish innocence:

Playboy boss Hugh Hefner wants to the 15-year-old to follow up her controversial photographs for a magazine recently and strip off completely in the pages of his magazine, but only when she reaches the legal age.

The 82-year-old also slammed the furore surrounding her poses for the magazine. “I think to make such a big to do over something as innocent as those photos, I think is a reflection on how schizophrenic America is about sexuality,” he said.

Hugh is such a smart fellow. His comment clearly illustrates the phallacious thinking behind these so-called 'slippery slope' arguments.

I mean, it's not as though a few partially unclothed photos of a girl statutorily under the age of sexual consent generated so much heat that they attracted the attention of... oh, I don't know ... a magazine that features photos of nude women :p

On the otter heiny, this is just inexcusable.

- Cassandra
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Just getting on a plane for a 48 hour turnaround to Seattle, so I'll be out of touch today until late afternoon. Bug my co-bloggers to step up, or post your favorite links of the day in the comments. We need to feed the beast around here.

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The recently identified trend of sex in the office has gone decidedly too far:

Vice Adm. John Stufflebeem seemed to have it all. He rose from deck seaman to a Naval Academy football star whose punting prowess earned him the nickname “Boomer” and a part-time practice gig with the Detroit Lions...

And then it all began to unravel.

In January, an anonymous letter revealed an 18-year-old secret that Stufflebeem thought was long buried and forgotten. The letter accused Stufflebeem of carrying on an eight-month affair with a female State Department staffer while the two were assigned to the White House in 1990.

Stufflebeem, then a 37-year-old commander, pretended to be a widower, telling the woman that his wife had died of breast cancer and that he was raising his two children on his own, according to the Inspector General’s report, obtained by Navy Times through the Freedom of Information Act.

In fact, Stufflebeem was still living with his wife at the time.

The report says Stufflebeem had sex with the State Department staffer in sleeping quarters in the White House basement and when the two traveled abroad with the White House travel team. The two engaged in “passionate kissing” in a car parked near the White House grounds, and he even sexually propositioned the woman’s close friend on a trip to London, the report says.

An eighteen year-old affair, and an admiral is done. Why? Because he lied to the investigators. Why were there investigators? Because somebody sent an anonymous letter in January 2008 disclosing the affair from 1990.

You really need to hate somebody to send a letter like that.

CWCID: Jungle Trader.
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No question.

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More than six years into a world war, Americans still answer the call:

The Marine Corps far surpassed its recruiting goal last month and could eventually be more than a year ahead of schedule in its plan to grow the force to 202,000 members.

All military services met or exceeded their monthly recruiting goals in April, with the Marine Corps signing 142 percent of the number it was looking for, the Pentagon said.

The Army signed 101 percent of its goal, recruiting 5,681 against a goal of 5,650. The Navy and Air Force met their goals — 2,905 sailors and 2,435 airmen.

The Marine Corps enlisted 2,233 recruits against a goal of 1,577.

"The Marine Corps, if they continue to achieve the kind of success they have had, could meet their growth figures more than a year early," Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman told Pentagon reporters. That would mean by around the end of 2009.

Yes, parts of the economy are much slower, so if your first idea was to swing a hammer building McMansions you definitely need a plan B. That said, you still have to marvel at the success of recruitment in the teeth of an unpopular war that is still producing casualties.

I wonder three things. First, we are in the middle of a presidential election in which even the anti-war candidates repeatedly claim to "support our wonderful troops". Perhaps that is rubbing off -- I mean, if you have heard nothing but praise for our military from politicians of all stripes for years on end, maybe you might actually absorb the idea that military service is a meaningful and respectable way of life. Second, perhaps new recruits have become a bit desensitized to the risk of combat. After all, we have been at war a long time against a tough enemy in a very difficult part of the world, and notwithstanding predictions to the contrary the numbers of killed and permanently injured remain relatively low as a percentage of the total exposed to the risk. Perhaps new recruits today are more willing to confront the personal risk than during -- say -- 2005, when recruitment swooned under the press of the war. Finally, I wonder whether the apparent success of the new strategy under David Petraeus is also helping recruitment. It is obviously more appealing to join the military if you can believe that its leadership knows what it is doing.

In any case, it is gratifying to see the good news. How high will its profile be in tomorrow's New York Times?
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For all that those of us on the right complain about the liberal media, the national press corps does not always do favors for its favorites. See, for example, this headline from the Associated Press:

Obama defends his patriotism, quarrels with McCain

If you read the article, the editors might have chosen any number of other ledes that did not play into the McHillary talking points.

Just saying.
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Mrs. TigerHawk has recently remarked that she thinks Karl Rove has quickly become one of the best political analysts on television, and I agree. Fox hit a home run when it hired Rove. Interestingly, Ezra Klein agrees, although for a very different reason (heh).

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My sister -- who could use to be in your prayers right now -- inveighs against the use of soap with triclosan, the active ingredient in household soaps promoted as "antibacterial."

She makes a good point.

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Just saw the following on my Facebook feed:

John Hinderaker joined the group These 57 United States Against Barack Obama.

Heh.

Related lapel pin here.
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A bit chilly at the beach in Ocean City yesterday, but that didn't stop my son and his photogenic friend from enjoying it.



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You ever feel like this?

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We all have our climate change anxieties. I've been worried about the impact of AGW on great tits, and am very relieved that they are thriving notwithstanding rising CO² levels. I think I speak for many right-wing men when I say that this fairly well eviscerates the last good argument for greenhouse gas regulation:

No. Really.

CWCID: Jules, who apparently likes a warm globe.

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Obama promises to meet with Iran's leaders without preconditions, and then his surrogates deny that he did. Nice try. That may work with the New York Times, but the rubes aren't falling for it.

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Republican tiger picture of the day.

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In case anybody is so foolish as to argue that a weak dollar does not also contribute to inflation in the prices of domestic manufactures, consider the price of "craft beer." Has anybody else noticed that the price of a six-pack of, say, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (one of my favorites) has risen rapidly this year, almost perfectly in tandem with imports from the Eurozone (such as Becks or Pilsner Urquel)? Presumably craft beers compete with imports more than mass market beers, and have been able to raise their prices as the importers struggle with the strong Euro. My guess is that craft brewers are making a lot more money than they were a couple of years ago, even with the high prices for cereal grains.

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Sadly, I am extremely busy today. Consider this an open Lotus flower thread (yes, those are the mountains around Guilin, China in the background).

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Here is a proposed list of the "top fifteen" manipulated photographs. Almost all of them will be familiar to you, and in some cases you, at least, will know that bloggers uncovered the fraud (see, e.g., Lebanon).

CWCID: Good Shit (main page NSFW).

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Barack Obama has, apparently, visited "57 states, one left to go." Video at the link.

Some bloggers have noted that the media would be all over it if John McCain (or Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush) had said such a thing. True, perhaps, but I do not think that any of those men should apologize for thinking about steak sauce at a time like this.

Of course, there is another explanation beyond the steak sauce theory or the traditional lame excuse that he was "tired" (yeah, right, like Winston Churchill used that excuse) or that he's "lost his bearings": Barack Obama is an imperialist! His mistake was not in counting the states properly, but in failing to say that he wants to visit 57 states. And who doesn't? Why didn't he say that he wanted to bring back "manifest destiny" a little earlier in the campaign? That would have helped him with the Reagan Democrats. For sure.

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Before you flip the bird on your drive home this evening, remember that you might end up having to testify about it:

More birdology here.

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University of Illinois law professor Francis Boyle has, according to this report from Iran, submitted a request to Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he be engaged to "represent Iran in an international tribunal for trying the Zionist regime on charges of genocide of Palestinians and the blockade in the Gaza Strip."

Professor Boyle accuses Israel of committing 'Nuremberg offenses' against the Palestinians.

Boyle has recently been calling for the impeachment of US President George W. Bush.

In fairness, Boyle also called for the impeachment of Bill Clinton, and he is a strong advocate for the independence of Hawaii, which, no doubt, has suffered "Nuremberg offenses" inflicted on it by the other 49 states. It does make one wonder, though, whether the taxpayers of Illinois understand how their money is being spent by their state university.
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Outspoken liberal actor Alec Baldwin wants to run for political office. I think we all need to encourage him:

Baldwin told "60 Minutes" he would be ready to face the public and the press, in part because of the scrutiny that accompanied his divorce and custody battle with actress Kim Basinger.

In April 2007 a voicemail by Baldwin to his daughter in which he called her a "thoughtless little pig" was widely reported in newspapers, magazines and on television.

"If you go through the things I have gone through with the media like this thing with my daughter, there's only one thing that comes to mind initially -- that is how my daughter must have felt to have this played out in public," Baldwin said.

Still, he seemed no less outspoken now than he was before his divorce. He had earlier called his ex-wife's lawyer a "300-pound homunculus with a face like a clenched fist."

"I was being kind," Baldwin told interviewer Morley Safer.

Yes, it is hard to think of a greater boon to righty blog traffic than Alec Baldwin in an actual political campaign.
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A rather passionate climate change skeptic traveled to Greenland and took some pictures of all the ice, with factoids.

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I thought this was a great picture:

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[UPDATE 6:30 AM EDT Friday: Never mind. But the brilliant analysis still holds!]

The Associated Press serves up an almost startlingly optimistic lede:

Iraqi police commandos captured the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq in a raid in the northern city of Mosul, Iraqi officials said Thursday, in what could mark a significant blow to the Sunni insurgency in its last urban stronghold.

When the A.P. starts using phrases like "significant blow" and "last urban stronghold" it rocks my world.

Anyway, I sure hope he does not end up in Gitmo. That would be terrible.

This is of a piece with the enormous progress made against Al Qaeda in Iraq in the last year. Before and after pictures below, compiled from CSIS's enormous compendium of Iraq PowerPoint slides:

Of course, al Qaeda has pretty good "corporate governance" and there is usually a successor waiting in line when a top commander is caught or killed. That does not mean that al Qaeda can sustain infinite losses in its leadership. Each time we or the government of Iraq creates a hole in al Qaeda's organization, it needs to shuffle around its command and admit somebody new. That creates a new opportunity for infiltration, and that is the key to defeating any insurgency.

MORE: Richard Fernandez has more, including the same comparison with the maps (except that he has March 2008 data and better formatting, which should come as no surprise to any of us).

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