Fish Fear Me

We all Know What That Means

My vote for quote of the day(emphasis mine):

The zoo director described the as-yet-unnamed cobra as a "little snake" who is 20 to 24 inches long and who weighed in today at about 3 ounces. Breheny said she had "no obvious bulges" and appeared to be in good condition when she was discovered.

Mouse party in the Bronx Zoo reptile house tonight! Well, parts of the reptile house. 

From Another Planet

Three days after Obama's speech on Libya and what we are doing there is still a bizarre tangle of contradictions and dishonesty. It's almost otherworldly. Forget proving that Obama was born in Hawaii. I want some proof that he's a carbon-based life form, because I have my doubts that any human President could come up with something this weird. 

Only A Matter Of Time

Remember our friend from last Friday, the university professor who received an open records request on his state provided email account from those awful Wisconsin Republicans? You know, the worst "Have you no decency, sir?" moment since those words were first uttered? I was kind of wondering if this was the first time an open records request had been filed on a UW professor's email, but I decided against investing the time to try to find out. Sure enough, it turns out there has been at least one before this, filed by a liberal group in Wisconsin:

Before the poll's release, Lightbourn emailed UW-Madison political science professor and pollster Ken Goldstein with concerns that groups like One Wisconsin Now would see "WPRI's own data as showing lack of support for choice." One Wisconsin Now obtained the emails through the open records law.

Oops. And I'll bet there are more where that came from.

I'm sure someone will splutter that in One Wisconsin Now's case they had a good reason, but that's not the real issue. The left used the open records law to hunt for something in a university professor's email account back in 2009 or 2010. To howl about the state GOP using the law in the very same way is not only hypocritical, it's juvenile.

Another day, another phony excuse to get the monkeys riled up and flinging poo. 

(via NRO)

Now This Would Be Change I Could Believe In

Do you know what a deeply cynical laugh sounds like?

"There is a different leader in Syria now, many of the members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he's a reformer," Clinton said.

There. Did you hear it?

I give Clinton credit for putting that line about "reformer" onto some anonymous members of Congress, but it's still incredibly cynical to even repeat that lie. 

Bashir Assad is a member of that very tiny club of people I would gladly pull the trigger on if given the opportunity. I would kill him without hesitation and so should our government. He not only orders the murder of his own people, he is responsible for thousands of deaths in Lebanon and Iraq.

I would love to see the protesters in Syria overthrow Assad's government. Unlike Libya, where my hesitation about overthrowing Gaddafi is because of uncertainty about who will replace him, in Syria anything would be better than Assad. Anything that has even a chance of breaking up the Syria-Iran alliance of evil would be a good thing. I don't think the US should overtly intervene in Syria, but we should do anything that can be quietly done to support the protesters there.

Questions

At what point do we admit that the humanitarian mission is over and that the US, UK, and France are functioning as the rebel air force in Libya?

The rebels have used the coalition air raids, which reversed the government's advantage, to launch a blitzkrieg to the west, regaining all the territory -- and more -- they lost in the counter-offensive Gaddafi launched with tanks and artillery two weeks ago.

It appears that the western coalition has hit targets around Gaddafi's hometown of Sirte as the rebels approach. Will we provide close air support to the rebel effort to take Sirte? Can we do something like that and still stay within the UN mandate? 

On a related note, is it just my perception or is it amazingly quiet when it comes to info about Libyan casualties? There are hints here and there. I read a WaPo story yesterday that mentioned "a dozen" dead government troops at the same time as it described a road "littered" with burned out military vehicles. We read about our jets hitting tanks and other armored vehicles, but each of those vehicles had crews and perhaps passengers. How many are we killing everyday? 

I mention casualties not to try to win any sympathy for Gaddafi's troops, but because for eight long years we have been told that killing people creates more enemies, more insurgents. Do the men we are killing not have families and tribes? Won't they want revenge? Why was that a problem for the US in Iraq but not now?

It may very well turn out that President Obama is doing the right thing and everything will work out fine. Perhaps when he addresses the nation tonight we will get some answers. But this whole thing strikes me as an example of Ready-Fire-Aim from the administration and the implications for the future are not good.

If Gaddafi stays in power now, we look weak. If we provide the air support that the rebels need to overthrow Gaddafi then we exceed the mandate and good luck getting China or Russia to abstain on the next one. That door will be closed. If we succeed in removing Gaddafi, how much do we help the new government with the inevitable insurgency that it will face? If we end up enforcing a stalemate, then how many on both sides die in a protracted civil war?

I know I'm not the only one unhappy about how US involvement has developed and the seeming lack of an overarching strategy here. President Obama better have some answers tonight or the shit is going to hit the fan.

Look Out Below

The unseasonably warm temps a couple of weeks ago unleashed the annual spring flooding threat around Minnesota, though below normal temps have tamped things back down a little bit. Cities and towns across Minnesota will see nearby rivers cresting for the first time this week. Yeah, you read that right. It is likely that many rivers will see multiple crests this year.

Barring some sort of unanticipated levee collapse it appears that most of the threatened cities will get through the next week okay. The threat of ice jams is still present along many of the rivers and that also could create sudden flooding. In addition, there is still a fair amount of snow north of the Twin Cities and any rain that we get in the next few weeks could change the situation quickly for the worse. The NWS current flood statements can be found here. 

On the western border of the state, the Red River tributaries are starting to rise. The latest NWS statement for that area now says "All points along the Red River now have a better than 98 percent risk of major flooding." There is still a lot of snow out west also and the risks of record flooding is rising all along the river basin. Don't be surprised if you start hearing news about Fargo-Morehead and Grand Forks in the next couple of weeks.

Our friends north of the border have Duff's Ditch to handle what the Red River throws at them and I'm not concerned for them. For those to our south: It will be coming soon, so lookout below.

Maybe This Is The Powers War Act

Oh, the humanity:

The Orlando Sentinel assigned longtime reporter Scott Powers to cover the event. But when he arrived, Biden staffers decided they didn’t want him mingling with the 150 guests who had forked over $500 to meet Biden, so they locked him in a closet! A member of the Biden advance team even stood guard outside the door to prevent Powers from escaping.

Perhaps France will be inspired by a comment there and request a no fly zone over Joe Biden in the humanitarian interests of all journalists.

Decency?

Some on the left are up in arms because a university professor in Wisconsin who had published some opinions about recent events there has been hit with a Freedom of Information Act request from the GOP regarding his state-issued email account. This is being regarded as an attempt to intimidate the professor into silence. Perhaps it is, but the state GOP there is not saying why they want the information and I think that FOIA requests generally don't require a reason.

Regardless, I wonder how many people who are upset today laughed at the uncomfortable scrutiny that Joe the Plumber received just for questioning then-candidate Obama. Were they outraged at the invasion of privacy? The illegal release of state records? I don't think so. In fact, I think a number of the websites at that Memeorandum.com link piled their own abuse on as well.

I would love to see a societal reboot when it comes to decency and civility in politics, but it is not going to happen unilaterally. Who am I kidding? It's not going to happen at all. 

This is a case for following the law and releasing whatever is legally obligated to be released. If someone doesn't like what the law says then change the law. In the meantime, spare me the selective outrage.

Not Just Wrong

I wonder if this idiot, Bryan Fischer, understands how much damage he does to the religious conservative movement in the US when he writes drivel like this:

From a constitutional point of view, Muslims have no First Amendment right to build mosques in America. They have that privilege at the moment, but it is a privilege that can be revoked if, as is in fact the case, Islam is a totalitarian ideology dedicated to the destruction of the United States. The Constitution, it bears repeating, is not a suicide pact. For Muslims, patriotism is not the last refuge of a scoundrel, but the First Amendment is.

If you cherry pick the right quotes you can make it seem that the Founders believed all sorts of things regarding the First Amendment. I rest my case solely on the simple fact that nowhere in that text is Christianity singled out for special treatment. Say what you will about them, but those men were not stupid. If they had intended to create a supreme position for Christianity they would have done so. They didn't. End of story.

I've criticized people for refusing to acknowledge that Islam as practiced in large parts of the world is misogynistic, barbaric, and intolerant of other faiths. Fischer is the flip side of that very same coin, only he refuses to acknowledge that the vast majority of Muslims in this country practice their faith in a manner that is fully compatible with our law and the norms of society.

Fischer has every right to show himself to be a bigot and a fool of course, because the Founders didn't carve out an exception when it comes to the free speech rights of assholes. And he is free to practice whatever his version of Christianity is because nobody has carved an exception to the First Amendment preventing that. Before calling for other religious exceptions in the Constitution, Bryan Fischer may want to think twice about that.

Holey Land

Yesterday it was rain and today some wet snow. Tonight it will get down to 11° and then tomorrow back up around freezing. We've been moving back and forth between both sides of that freezing mark for awhile now. You know what that means?

Potholes. Huge numbers of giant potholes. 

You know how bad it is? It's so bad that we're pulling the blankets and candles out of our vehicle emergency bags and putting in rope, climbing gear, and hard hats.

You know how bad it is? The state has opened a website where Twin Cities drivers can register their starting point and route to destination so if they don't show up, their loved ones will have a narrower list of potholes to check. 

You know how bad it is? The Democrats here are calling for mandatory mouth guards for all vehicle drivers and their passengers. 

You know how bad it is? Homeland Security is frantically increasing surveillance around Minnesota because Muammar Gaddafi has learned that the potholes here are way bigger than anything Saddam Hussein had for hiding spots.

You know how bad it is? Charlie Sheen fell into one and the last thing we heard was, "Loooooosing."

You know how bad it is? If the NFL and the players walked up to one particular pothole in Minneapolis and peered over the edge, they would immediately decide to settle.

You know how bad it is? I was looking down into one the other day and an old man walked up to me and volunteered that he had never seen anything that bad in the old days.

I'm telling ya, it's bad.