What’s a little imperialism among friends?

Russia has decided to build a naval base in Abkhazia, a breakaway province of the Republic of Georgia currently under occupation by the Russians.

Funny. I thought that was sovereign Georgian territory. I guess it’s OK for us to build a naval base in Baja California. I’m sure Mexico won’t mind.

 

Technorati tags: Abkhazia, Georgia, Baja California, imperialism, Russia

They’ll blame this on global warming, too

Sea Ice Growing at Fastest Pace on Record

An abnormally cool Arctic is seeing dramatic changes to ice levels.  In sharp contrast to the rapid melting seen last year, the amount of global sea ice has rebounded sharply and is now growing rapidly. The total amount of ice, which set a record low value last year, grew in October at the fastest pace since record-keeping began in 1979.

But let that not worry true believers, who should take strength in their computer models:

Bill Chapman, a researcher with the Arctic Climate Center at the University of Illinois, says the rapid increase is “no big deal”. He says that, while the Arctic has certainly been colder in recent months, the long-term decrease is still ongoing. Chapman, who predicts that sea ice will soon stop growing, sees nothing in the recent data to contradict predictions of global warming.

It’s amusing the way global warming alarmists regularly dismiss any empirical evidence that contradicts the truths to which they cling bitterly, or the failure of their own models to accurately predict what should be happening, if manmade global warming were true. That’s not science, that’s religion.

Blessed be the Goracle.

(hat tip: Power Line)

 

Technorati tags: climate change, global cooling, Al Gore, Goracle, junk science, sea ice, arctic, polar ice, pseudoscience

Quote of the day

Karl Rove on Joe Biden:

Do you like Joe Biden?
I think he has an odd combination of longevity and long-windedness that passes for wisdom in Washington.

Three points, nothing but net. 

(hat tip: Pax Parabellum)

 

Technorati tags: Joe Biden, Karl Rove, quotes

The lady was right, episode two

Sarah Palin caused a controversy on the campaign trail when she accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists," a reference to former but still proud domestic terrorists William Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn.

Guess what? She was right.

Oh, don’t take my word for it. Just ask the terrorist, himself:

In a new afterword to his memoir, 1960s radical William Ayers describes himself as a "family friend" of President-elect Barack Obama and writes that the campaign controversy over their relationship was an effort by Obama’s political enemies to "deepen a dishonest narrative" about the candidate.

Ayers describes phone threats and hate e-mail he received during the campaign, and he bemoans Obama’s guilt by association.

During the campaign, Ayers’ friendship with Obama was a favorite subject of conservative bloggers and talk show hosts who insisted the two were closer than the candidate was admitting. Ayers’ new description of the relationship seems to contradict Obama’s statements.

Obama had dismissed Ayers as "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" and "somebody who worked on education issues in Chicago that I know."

(Emphases mine.)

"Family friend" is a bit closer than "just a guy in the neighborhood," I would say. This may be a record: Obama isn’t even inaugurated yet, and already we have to keep a catalog of his lies misstatements.

Meanwhile, let’s remember who really was the straight-talker in this situation:

 

LINKS: Verum Serum; Ace; Me, earlier.

 

Technorati tags: Barack Obama, William Ayers, honesty, Sarah Palin

Memo to Harry Reid: we won

Yes, this one just sticks with me. The Majority Leader of the United States Senate, Harry Reid (D-Defeatism), proclaiming that all was lost in Iraq and that we should just get out and accept defeat:

The war in Iraq "is lost" and a US troop surge is failing to bring peace to the country, the leader of the Democratic majority in the US Congress, Harry Reid, said Thursday.

"I believe … that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week," Reid told journalists.

Reid said he had delivered the same message to US President George W. Bush on Wednesday, when the US president met with senior lawmakers to discuss how to end a standoff over an emergency war funding bill.

"I know I was the odd guy out at the White House, but I told him at least what he needed to hear … I believe the war at this stage can only be won diplomatically, politically and economically."

This monument to Senator Reid’s (D-Loser) brilliance came before the Petraeus counterinsurgency strategy (the "surge") had even been implemented. In other words, give up. Don’t even try to win.

Pardon me, Senator Reid (D-Idiot)? According to someone much more knowledgeable that you, someone who actually waited to see how the Petraeus strategy would play out, we’ve won:

"THE WAR IS OVER AND WE WON:" Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. "There’s nothing going on. I’m with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I’m with haven’t fired their weapons on this tour and they’ve been here eight months. And the place we’re at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there’s nothing going on. I’ve been walking my feet off and haven’t seen anything. I’ve been asking Iraqis, ‘do you think the violence will kick up again,’ but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they’re usually dour." There’s a little bit of violence here and there, but nothing that’s a threat to the general situation. Plus, not only the Iraqi Army, but even the National Police are well thought of by the populace. Training from U.S. toops has paid off, he says, in building a rapport.

(Emphasis mine.)

Unlike Majority Leader of the Senate Reid (D-Tool), who last visited Iraq in 2005, Michael Yon has been there several times, for months at a time, embedding with our forces in the field and touring independently. In 2006, he was warning that we were in danger of losing. Now, when he says we’ve won, I take him much more seriously than I take you, Senator Reid (D-Dimwit).

Of course, while I pick on Reid, who richly deserves it, the whole of the Democratic party in Washington has earned my contempt over their opposition to the war. Not than opposition is wrong, itself. One can oppose how a war is conducted without parroting enemy propaganda and hurting morale by wallowing in defeatism. Both Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain provided principled and sharp criticism of the conduct of the war (and McCain was right) without ever losing sight of the fact that, once committed, we had to fight to win, for losing would be terrible for us and a catastrophe for the Iraqis.

But not the national Democrats overall. Reid, Pelosi, Murtha, Schumer, Durbin, Obama and dozens of others of our senators and representatives didn’t just oppose the conduct of the war while hewing to the goal of victory, they banked their party’s electoral fortunes on an American defeat, hoping the people would turn to them when things went bad. In their public statements, they did everything they could to delegitimize the war effort: lying about the Bush Administration’s reasons for going to war (and conveniently forgetting their own votes in favor of invading Iraq and the 22 reasons given for authorizing war besides WMDs); voting to cutoff funding for our forces in the field; trying to impose timetables for surrender withdrawal regardless of battlefield conditions; and even going so far as to parrot enemy propaganda and compare our forces to those of Hitler and Pol Pot.

This is one big reason why, even had the Democrats nominated for President someone I could support, I couldn’t vote for them. Elected representatives don’t work against their own country. Isn’t that a given? The most charitable description of their behavior is childish, immature, and shortsighted. Anything more I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.

Nevertheless, and in spite of Reid, Pelosi, and Murtha, we’ve won. What the future holds and whether Iraqis will grasp the opportunity they have to rise above the rest of the Arab Middle East, no one knows. But, I can say with certainty there is genuine hope for them and, with Iraq as an example, the whole region.

It is one of the great ironies of recent history that George Bush,and John McCain, two of the men most responsible for the turnaround and victory in Iraq, are relegated to afterthoughts. Bush leaves office with the lowest approval ratings since Harry Truman (How fitting, if you think about it.), and McCain lost a national election because the victory in Iraq, in which he was a key figure, took off the table his single biggest selling point, national security. And yet win we did, for which we owe both these men (and so many others) an eternal debt of thanks.

Take that, Harry Reid.

LINKS: Ed Morrissey, with impressive video of the improvement in one of the worst neighborhoods in Baghdad; Ace; Confederate Yankee; Blue Crab Boulevard; Pax Parabellum; Power Line; Transterrestrial Musings.

 

Technorati tags: Iraq, war, victory, Michael Yon, Harry Reid, defeatism, John McCain, George W. Bush, surge