GreenPeace “Enviro-warriors” Hoisted on Their Own Lance

This feed from AP is just bloody hilarious….

“KETCHIKAN, Alaska — A jury found Greenpeace guilty Monday on two misdemeanor criminal negligence charges that were filed after the group’s ship entered Alaska waters for an anti-logging campaign without required paperwork.
Greenpeace’s ship came to Alaska to conduct an anti-logging campaign in the Tongass National Forest. The ship was carrying more than 70,000 gallons of ‘petroleum products’ at the time, court papers said.
…
State regulators charged Greenpeace, ship Capt. Arne Sorensen and ship agent Willem Beekman with multiple counts of misdemeanor criminal negligence last July for not filing the spill plan or having proof of financial responsibility in case of a spill.”

What would have been rich is if they’d actually sprung a leak… watching the reaction.
Still, I don’t suppose they’ll learn anything from the experience.

BBCT: The Lovely Michelle

Howard Dean ties the DNC to socialism in public withhis endorsement, today, of Socialist Bernie Sanders

Kismet on the Yalta discussion of yesterday… (Which I note Billy joining in on last night)

In reading through the small mountain of clippings my system generated form last night’s runs, I see one fromJonah Goldberg this morning. Jonah apparently gets it, more than he lets on…

What is Schlesinger saying? He writes:

The Yalta conference in February 1945 produced, according to President Bush, “one of the greatest wrongs of history.” The Yalta agreements “followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact….Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable.”
The American president is under the delusion that tougher diplomacy might have preserved the freedom of small East European nations. He forgets the presence of the Red Army. No conceivable diplomacy could have saved Eastern Europe from Soviet occupation. And military action against the Soviet Union was inconceivable so long as the Pacific War was still going on. Our military planners, in order to reduce American casualties, counted on the Red Army to enter the war against Japan. At Yalta Stalin promised a firm date in August. And in February the atom bomb seemed a fantasy dreamed up by nuclear physicists.

Putting aside his argument about what was or was not possible at the time, is he saying that the codification of the Soviet occupation wasn’t one of the “greatest wrongs of history”? It is an odd moral argument which says that because (alleged) necessity requires acceptance of a great wrong, it is no longer a great wrong because it was (allegedly) necessary.

And, as it has long been of personal interest to me, does he think the forced repatriation of Soviet deserters, refugees and rebels (such as General Vlasov’s army) to the Soviet Union was necessary? Because of Yalta, the U.S. and Britain returned perhaps hundreds of thousands of former Soviet troops to the Soviet Union who were subsequently slaughtered. Alexander Solzhenitsyn called this war crime the “last secret” of World War Two. I recall reading how the troops under British control went so far as to use the glass from their bathroom mirrors rather to slit their own throats rather than be sent back to Stalin’s Russia. Did we have to do that because the Red Army was already in Eastern Europe? And if so, why? Or is that FDR can never be wrong in Schlesinger’s eyes?

Clearly, Goldberg’s on the right track here.

And Schlesinger, as usual, is laughably off the mark. Note his first leaning is toward Diplomacy. But who’s talking about Diplomacy, here?

As I suggested yesterday, we had the Patton option of re-arming the Germans and bringing them along with us. Between those added troops and Stalin killing off his own troops, our dealing with Stalin via military options, would have been far less a problem than Schlesinger makes it.

OK, before you start… granted that there’s a little bit of mud in this creek;

Stalin had stolen the plans for The Bomb by this time, but firstly, we didn’t know that… didn’t even suspect it, yet… and secondly,even if we DID know… it would have taken him at least 6 months to get anything going based on what he managed to steal.

No… I submit that then… that moment, was the time to strike, and win the freedom of all those people. They had the option for freedom available to them…and they didn’t take it. So, the central issue is why did Churchill and FDR make the choices they did?

I dare to suggest to you that the only logical way FDR and Churchill could have been fighting against the Nazis, and then bend over on the Balitics, is if there were Socialist geo-political motivations on their part. Motivations which… what do you know… were already taking effect in the form of laws and social changes in the US and the UK during the war, as I pointed out yesterday.

And look, I’m a strong believer in the politics of the possible. I am fully aware there are places where compromises need be made, and have advocated for them when the need is there. I’ve taken serious heat over the years in various arguemnts, for doing so. So be it; it’s part of the deal. I still maintain that compromise is a great tool to get to the ends desired… when the situation requires it.

However; what I’m suggesting here is that given the tools we had to hand, that this was not one of the times such compromise was needed…. and that thereby we have proof that Churchill and FDR were motivated by something other than the spirit of compromise. The most logical answer, given the Social Democrat history of all three men, was the desire to make the world safe for socialism.

And dare I say it, Schlesinger, as quoted above by Goldberg, seems slightly miffed that the ploy didn’t work, and seems now posessed in attempts to cover for FDR’s obvious socialist intentions.

Oh, and of course, Schlesinger uses the chance to “dis” President Bush,and to bang the drum for Diplomacy, “dis-ing” the military option. Gee, no motivation there for a demonstrably failed career diplomat, huh?

Schlesinger, for all his bluster has yet to figure out that there are some people who simply cannot be negotiated with. Which is perhaps why he was still in the camp for further negotiations with Saddam.

Idiot.

Boortz, today points up the fact that today starts the David Rosen trial.

For those who don’t know, don’t worry; the reason you don’t know is the press doesn’t want you to know. But, I’ll take care of that.

The trial surrounds the charges that David Rosen as Hillary Clinton’s campaign director in 2000, cooked the books surrounding the costs of a fundraiser for that campaign.  Boortz picks up the chase:

The cost of the event was reported to only be $400,000, but it cost much more. But under the campaign finance rules in effect at the time, underreporting the cost meant The Hildabeast’s campaign could spend more money on their campaign. A contributor told the FBI he gave the Clinton campaign $1.1 million, but they only reported the 400K. So the question on everybody’s mind is this: did Hillary Clinton know about it?

Absolutely, 100%, without question. An amount of that size, that late in the race, when fund-raising is so critical, there is no way Hillary Clinton did not know that her finance director was fudging the figures so that they would have more hard money to spend on the campaign. Her challenger at the time had gotten her to swear off soft money at the time, which is money given to a political party without limitations. The Hildabeast was desperate for cash, Rosen knew it, so he cooked the books.

Looks like Hillary’s bag man is going to fall on the sword for her. And where is the media on this? Can you imagine if this were a Republican Senator? We would be hearing endless cries for his or her resignation. But since it’s Democrat Hillary Clinton, not a peep from the biased, leftist media. If this were a Republican .. there would be scalps hanging on the belt of some New York Times reporters.

As it is, you don’t hear much about this. And you know why, don’t you?

Michelle Malkin regarding Huffington’s new Blog collective:

“Unlike a lot of observers, though, I don’t think Arianna’s going to fail. Arianna is very good at what she does, which is to collect people like curios and throw sprawling house parties for them–parties that attract never-ending hordes of looky-loos simultaneously bemused and repulsed by the grand spectacle of obsequiousness and megalomania dressed up as political dialogue.”

True, she is that, Michelle, but I gotta tell ya… the fall of Err America and the MSM together, as well as the way the Democrats favorability numbers have been falling than the tail fin of an Airbus, should all be clues that the American people are interested in a bit more subtstance than Huffington is able to provide.

Huffington will fail.

Yesterday, I agreed with Billy’s take on Yalta.
Today I note President Bush’s take seems similar.

V-E Day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end oppression. The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of stability left a continent divided and unstable. The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history.

Interesting, and quite correct. I wonder if he’ll get the credit here, he deserves.

John at Powerline, though has problems, and it’s an interesting point;

To my knowledge, the United States was in no position to bargain for the freedom of the Baltic countries.

OK, we were in a comparatively weakened state, but I am unconvinced.

We had a standing army we’ve not had the size and strength of since. If we were not equipped to play hardball with Stalin at that point in history, what in the world made anyone think we’d be more able to deal with him after giving him a chance to re-group, following the war?

George Patton, for all of his problems, had it right when he suggested we re-arm the Germans and beat Stalin back with them, while they still had the military there to in Europe to fight with. As costly as it would have been in terms of lives and material, I can’t help but think we’d have saved many lives, in the following 80 years. Certainly, freedom would have fared better, the world over.

The problem, of course, was the will on the part of Churchill and FDR…. to perform the deed at hand… to strike a blow for freedom, not just in the west.

Understandable, I suppose, for a world already weary with 6 years of world war. But of greater sway, I think, was FDR’s attitude toward socialism…and Churchill’s, as well. They’d found, in Bolshevik Russia, a kindred spirit…. a Fellow Social Democrat… Stalin… that they were less than willing to go up against on philisophical ground, as much as anything else.

But was Yalta the start of it? I think not. Consider the state of social affairs Before, during, and just following VE day. It is instructive that the swing toward collectivism in Great Britain, and here in the ‘States, both occurred as a direct result of the war, the preceeding depression, and the reactions of the respective governments to eeach of these. The people were already conditioned to the demands of a wartime government, following the conditions surrounding those hardships. Theodore Dalrymple notes this trend rather backhandedly in his recent examination of Hayek’s “The Road to Serfdom”, published in 1944.

Hayek pointed out that the wartime unity of purpose was atypical; in more normal times, people had a far greater, indeed an infinite, variety of ends, and anyone with the power to adjudicate among them in the name of a conscious overall national plan, allowing a few but forbidding most, would exert vastly more power than the most bloated plutocrat of socialist propaganda had ever done in a free-market society.

And here’s the point I’ve been leading to… the constant drumbeat of charges that George W Bush is engaged in this tactic as we speak vis-a-vie the Iraq conflict… That the rights of people will suffer greatly under this president. I doubt it, however. This argument, I suppose to be like like any other; there’s a grain of truth at the middle of the much larger construction around it. The problem in this construction is an utter lack of a historical perspective.

Dalrymple points up:

Sounds rather like Leftist politics in a thumbnail sketch, doesn’t it?

And as true as this is, there’s an even more central point against trying to paint GWB with the brush of using the war to kill off freedom here at home; At what point in history have we ever seen an American Presdient in a foreign country , denouncing the socialist tendencies of a predecessor, as we saw President Bush, denouncing the Socialist supporting foreign policies of FDR on the ground that such policies cost freedom in other lands?

Sorry, I don’t think someone capable of such a statement, particularly when delivered repeatedly, has reduction of freedom in mind, for the longer term.

Finally, a note of Irony, and another example about how the American left lacks the historical perspetive needed to correctly discern teh nature of political events; In each case, the historical governments under discussion, here, have swung seriously to the left as a result of the noted conditions.  Is this really what the American left fears, that GWB will go too far left?

“The man’s father is a wonderful human being,” Reid said in response to a question about President Bush’s policies. “I think this guy is a loser. “I think President Bush is doing a bad job,” he added to a handful of chuckles. “He’s driving this country into bankruptcy,” Reid said, referring to the deficit. “He’s got us in this intractable war in Iraq where we now have about 1,600 American soldiers dead and another 15,000 injured.”

Well, now we know why he’s got the support of Democrats… he represents them so well. He’s clearly been reading Demoratic Underground.

We also see a double standard at work, here.
Were a Republican to say this about a sitting Democratic president… do you suppose the press would be this silent about it?

What the beep is THIS all about?

Darren Copeland makes mention of a story in the Denver area. Two cops shot at a private baptismal party.
Apparently the cops were there providing security.

Ummmm forgive me for asking, but why in the world would you need armed security for such an event?

And of course the other question is, who shoots up such a party?  If you’re aware of such problems where such security is needed, do we realy need to have the party?

There’s more to this than we’re being told.

Not much really going on in the political world, this week. I’m more focused on personal items, otherwise known collectively, as LIFE. You’ll get a column like this out of me occasionally.

A few of the highlights:

Mother’s day 2005 was actually a nicer day than I’d envisioned, it being the first Mother’s day after my wife’s mom had passed on. Honestly, I wasn’t sure how that would go, for a number of reasons.

We went to Chruch as usual, and left from there to run over to the grave of Donna’s Mom… the landscaping has apparently been tended to by the staff there, finally. I was starting to wonder when they’d get to it. I do find myself missing her… and of course Donna does as well. But you continue, as you can…. because the only other alternative is far less attractive.

From there, we ran over to my Mom’s place for a cookout, on her brandy-new gas grill. The thing is a pleasure to use,I’ll tell ya. The kids ran around for a while, and had a good time… and for the first time in many months, we actually had the time to visit with my Mom.

We laid plans to run over to Medina next weekend with her… It’s a little berg about 40 miles west of here,,,, and I’ll tell you about that next week; it’s already a long story. If you’ve got kids, particualry if you live in Northeast Ohio, check back here next weekend. I’ve got a treat for you.

Work on Bit’s Box proceeds apace, now that spring has come. Got the first serious clean-up done, the fridge is installed, and we’re nearly warm enough to where I’ll be able to lay down a coat of wax. Still got some work to do on the front bumper to repair some winter damage. But it’s looking OK.

It’s getting warmer around these parts the last week or so… we’ve been getting temps of 60 and 65 the last 4 days or so. Very nice. The instinct is kicking in to get the trailer out of the garage and start getting it road-worthy. We haven’t laid any plans this year for any extended road trips, (Fuel costs be hanged ) but I’m sure we’ll get in a weekend or two in some of the area’s parks, even if we don’t make one of our usual long hauls somewhere. Since we didn’t manage to get out last year…. at all… I’m rather keen on getting it going this year.

I guess perhaps I shouldn’t be complaining about the fuel costs too much; As conversions go this one really isn’t bad; I’m getting about 20 or 21 with it.  Not many conversions can claim 4500-5000lbs of tow capacity and yet that kind of MPG rating. I plan to hold onto this one as long as I can, given the choices; Either going full-sized conversion, which gets me about 15 or 16 mpg or going in the same size class which buys me a reduction in towcap, and front wheel drive… which I don’t like to tow with in any event. The Box only has about 100k on it, no rust, no body damage, no major mechanical issues… so I suppose I won’t need to worry about it’s replacement for another 100k or so anyway.

For this summer, though, Ohio, PA, Extreme southern and Northern NY state will do for now. Even with Fuel Costs in the $2.30/gal range, trailering with my current rig is still cheaper (read: More do-able) and more fun than flying, paying the long buck for a rental car and a hotel.  Safer, too. Damn seldom you’re going to hear about rigs like mine being hijacked into buildings, or bombed off the highway. Besides, they tend to get miffed when you try to light a camp fire in your hotel room.

Other matters:
Congrats to Bob Bittner, owner of WJIB/740 in Cambridge, who is pictured here at the station’s controls, courtesy of Garrett Wollman. I had the pleasure of working for Bob back in the middle 70’s at WVOR/100.5FM here in Rochester, when Bob was the Program director here… in a studio not 5 minutes walk from where this column is being written, in fact. Word from Bob today, is that his station is pulling a 1.0 in the latest book in the Boston market beating out several other AM stations in that market. An amazing feat, made all the more amazing by the fact that WJIB only runs 250 watts, and the big AM guns there are stations we’ve all heard from; WRKO and WBZ and they’re running 50,000 watts each.  A real David and Gliath story. There are times when I miss radio work… and this is one of them. (Sigh)

It pleases me no end Bob’s doing so well, there. Bob also owns and operates WJTO/730 up in Bath Maine, which is one of my favorite spots in the whole northeast for vacationing. Here’s where we stayed last time we were up that way. Better watch out, Bob; I may drop you an application next time I’m up that way, which may be as early as next summer.

By the way, you can see lots of other pics at Garrett’s site, found here. If you’re at all into Radio, it’s worth the stop.

Above all, life continues. Nothing earthshaking in this week’s missive.
But sometimes, that’s the best way to go.

Richard Nikoley has some thoughts on “Culturism”

Interesting he’s coming to the same conclusion I wrote up years ago.

BBC tip to Billy, who apparently is also (finally) starting to understand that argument.

Here we go again:

“Just now on ABC’s ‘This Week’, Sam Donaldson sneered at George Bush for tagging FDR with his complicity at Yalta for the disaster that overwhelmed eastern Europe at the end of World War II. Donaldson cited Ronald Reagan asserting that Josef Stalin had ‘broken his word’ promising elections in those countries.

I don’t have a cite from Reagan, so I can’t argue what he said or didn’t say. I will, however, point out that anyone who took Stalin at his word was a functional retard who deserved whatever he got. The tragedy of history, of course, is that the people who lived and died under the Soviet yoke didn’t deserve what they got.

(A gentle dig….)

Similarly, anyone who take the word of Donaldson… and for many of the same reasons. I’ve done a rather lengthy search and will continue to look.. but I see no such reference.

No argument about Yalta, however.

Billy has some problems With Dale Franks suggesting that First, Socialism is an economic system, and is not particularly related to a particular tax system.”

I’m not sure, here, Billy. I’ve gotta tell ya that I’ve always considered that socialism was in fact an economic system, albeit a fraudulant one… and was centered, not in theory, but in real world application, around who gets the money. Invariably, it ends up being the ones at the top of the supposedly non-existant pile.  We see that real-word application being applied increasingly, the world over to varied degrees. I’m unconvinced that in the end it was ever anything more or less.

Now… as to the rest of your argument, it looks from here like your larger concern is what you didn’t quote… the incrimental argument… and we’ve had that discussion before.

Yeah, Billy… That Jetlag’s a BITCH.

I’ve only done West Coast time, never having traveled outside North America.  4 hours was anough to screw my clock up for a few days. The kind of time shifts you describe… well… thanks, anyway.

Lowry at NR’s Corner:

From almost any conservative angle, Britain’s election result is disappointing.

From the standpoint of a British conservative, the Tory party lost a third election and gained very little ground — less than 1 percent of the popular vote.

No.
As I said yesterday… the Tories have tilted so far left you can’t fit water between they and the Liberals on domestic issues. They didn’t lose because they were conservatives, but rather because they are not.

From an American conservative standpoint, Tony Blair, who is a loyal friend of the United States, is today in a noticeably weakened political state. Though he won a third term — the first Labour prime minister to do so — he saw his majority substantially reduced and his share of the popular vote fall to a derisory 36 percent. If the British electoral system had not become so lopsidedly biased, he would have almost no majority at all.

And to the same point;

From the standpoint of a foreign-policy conservative, Blair’s loss is a sign of weakening support for the U.S. across Europe, even in America’s most reliable ally. Blair is generally reckoned to have lost a large number of “middle-class progressive” votes (i.e., Guardian-reading, muesli-eating, electric-car-driving voters) to the Liberal Democrats because of their hostility to the Iraq war.

Again, no, on both of these points.
Look at the amount of vitriol that the Tories the Lib Demos and the press have been aiming at Mr. Blair. That they put such a full-court press on, and this is the best they could do, I take as indicative that what anger there is out there against Blair is at worst soft, and largely manufactured.

NPR’s Jeffrey Dvorkin is in full butt-kissing mode, here:

First, it is essential to report on government documents. But in this case, publishing the unedited report (albeit unintentionally) could have — and could yet — threaten peoples’ lives. There are times when editors have to make a difficult choice between the public’s right to know and the risk of endangering lives. But this was not one of those instances. NPR was right to remove the documents from its Web site once it became clear that the full version could be accessed.

Second, the blogosphere has proven once again to be an amoral place with few rules. The consequences for misbehavior are still vague. The possibility of civic responsibility remains remote. It is a place where the philosophy of “who posts first, wins” predominates.

Are all newspeople such geldings, or do they only manage to grow reproduction equipment when making those right of center look bad?

Whatever happened, I wonder, to the idea… the newsman’s creed, the foundational concept of news people that was so famously put forward during the era of the Pentegon papers, and Watergate, that news orgs were supposed to dig for facts, and release them whatever the costs? Even to the point of going to the USSC?

Was Woodstein held to this standard, for example? Was the NYT in the PAPERS case?

By comparison to these, NPR had the facts right under their held-high noses, and didn’t bother to look at it, much less release the information contained on their very own website.

I dunno bout you, but I call that falling down on the job. Now why would you defend such an action? Or Inaction, as you will?

What would cause you to ignore such a difference?… Oh, wait… what am I thinking… Woodstein had the excuse of having a Republican as a target… a Republican who would have been hurt, not helped by the facts being dug for and thus exposed.  The NYT, similarly, by such digging and release of such info he found, managed to give the military a black eye. Not only was this found praiseworthy amongts the press, he got the Times to back him on it, and pay the legal costs involved.

No such excuse here.  Digging, in this case, would have shown the world that the soldiers at that checkpoint, did their jobs correctly, and it was the communist who was lying.

Now, so far in this discussion, we’re assuming, generously, that you didn’t dig and therefore didn’t know, NPR. Perhaps being less generous to the motives, one might assume you didn’t dig for the info because you already did know, and didn’t pass on that information? Either way…..What selective morality you have.

Let’s call is like it looks; It looks to those of us not on the government’s dole… such as yourself at NPR… that your supposed news org didn’t bother digging because you didn’t WANT the real answer. After all, making the Military action in Iraq look good isn’t on the agenda of any of the leftist MSM in general, and certainly not NPR in particular.

So, please… Jeffy boy……spare us your moral outrage about blogs and their supposed transgressions against the code, and spare us your whining about standards. Spare us too,the self-rightious and self-serving lectures from you about lives under threat because of such release. Wasn’t that one of the big arguments against The Pentegon Papers being printed?

Look, it’s the leftist dominated mainstream press that set that standard years ago, and has held the people involved as demi-gods ever since. Those same standards were applied here. But not by you.

You’re just ticked because Bloggers got the story out the left didn’t want out…. When what you really oughta be is red-faced because they did your job, when you didn’t have the courage to.