Bees: now too many, wrong kind: kill three dogs near San Bernadino

Africanized honey bees; bet you had forgotten about those buggers.

A swarm of Africanized “killer” bees attacked and killed three dogs in Hesperia last week when a hive was disturbed by a falling tree branch in a fenced backyard. Authorities say the owner of the three mastiff dogs a 100-pound female, 90-pound male and a 20-pound puppy was also stung repeatedly while attempting to save the animals on May 7th.

“They’re very aggressive, and where other bees will chase you and leave, these will chase you a quarter-mile or more,” Summers said.

About 90 percent of the bees in San Bernardino County desert areas are now Africanized honey bees, county Vector Control Program supervisor Joe Krygier said.

Situation in Somalia worsens

How can Bush be doing this shit without Congressional approval?

How bad is the situation in Somalia, the third target of George W. Bush’s “Terror War” take-downs? It’s “worse than Darfur,” says the UN’s humanitarian chief, John Holmes.

Holmes, a former top British diplomat, told the Telegraph that “In terms of the numbers of people displaced, and our access to them, Somalia is a worse crisis than Darfur or Chad or anywhere else this year.”

The sheer number of refugees in Somalia – approximately 400,000 – is still smaller than the two million or more who have fled their homes in Darfur, but as the Telegraph notes:

The speed and size of the exodus from Mogadishu has eclipsed the emergency in the western Sudanese province, where there are established camps run by international aid agencies. There are no such camps in Somalia, an east African country already on its knees after 16 years of clan fighting and no central government.

Most of those who have fled in recent weeks, including women, children and the elderly, are camping in fields in areas surrounding Mogadishu, without access to food, shelter, clean water or medicines.

The few medical relief agencies operating in the region, including Médecins Sans Frontières and the International Committee of the Red Cross, have reported fears of cholera outbreaks.

“We are only reaching maybe 35 to 40 per cent of those in need because of difficulties of access and security and of our presence on the ground,” Mr Holmes said in Nairobi yesterday.

Bush’s wars on Muslims are war crimes. Somalia never did anything to us, nor could they. We have destabilized a country that was finally getting organized. Now it is a disaster, like Afghanistan and Iraq.

McCain advocates immediate pullout from Senate; misses 42 straight votes

Cutting and running for president. Does not feel this means “Osama won,” or that Senate pages will “follow him home.” Film at 11.

Quote of the week: Bush warns, “…an enemy lurks…”

yeah, pres, you keep lookin for him and you might find him, just like OJ might.

Laugher of the week

The New York Sun cites a Chinese report that North Korea tested a missile in Iran that could reach US soil in Guam.

Is this on the front page of the Sun, I wonder, right above the latest “Elvis was pregnant when he died” story?

Who buys this paper? I thought Archie Bunker was a fictional character…

say, was that Dick Cheney I saw running out the back door? with Elliot Abrams?

This week at the Rapture: God’s into oil prices

consequently, we are all at greater risk of vanishing without a trace.

The Rapture Index rose one point, in response to Category 8 concerns: oil prices and supply.

I can just see The Almighty opening up the Heaven Street Journal and wondering how he’s gonna manage to pay for the commute to work, without having to quit the 24 Hour Fitness..

What ever happened to thunderbolts…..I thought God was into thunderbolts…why isn’t there a thunderbolt category?  Rapture Index Guy, if you’re reading this, what’s up with that?  You must have gone to a different Sunday School than I did….or maybe God talks to you.  I have to admit, he doesn’t talk to me. That’s why I read the Rapture Index every week.

See you next week, I know I’ll still be here, Rapture or no….

“War Czar”: Banana Republic, here we come !

Is defending our nation’s founding principles at every turn a paranoid response in the post-9/11 NSA, Monica Goodling, James Comey testimony world?
You tell me where the greater danger lies: al-Qaeda or George Bush? Are we clear? Even Thomas Friedman gets it:

… while the Bush team has been lecturing the Iraqi Shiites to limit de-Baathification in Baghdad, it was carrying out its own de-Democratization in the Justice Department in Washington.

Some have suggested this new War Czar will just be another fall guy, like Petraeus, that Bush can blame. He may even be a Bush/surge doubter. But I think he’s more than that.

Firstly, let’s recognize explicitly that Czar Lute would be a part of the great stall. He will go through Senate approval hearings, and eventually will be approved 99-0. That will be in June. So in September, when Petraeus throws up his hands, the Bush line will be (whine)”.. the Czar was approved 99-0 by the Senate to fix things in Iraq, and he has just begun; we have to give him a chance.” Another 6 months. Another 600 US dead, another 2000 crippled; another 50,000 Iraqis dead, another 500,000 refugees.

But more importantly, in my view, is the little consideration mentioned in passing, from the Washington Post:

As the White House’s new “war czar,” Lute will oversee the policy on and the execution of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, reporting directly to the president and issuing directions to Cabinet secretaries in Bush’s name. Although the newly created position is not subject to congressional approval, the Senate will have to approve Lute’s assignment because he is a senior active-duty military officer.

[Lute’s] selection comes at a time when the administration is struggling internally over extending the troop buildup in Iraq. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander there, has promised a progress report by September, which many in Washington have come to consider a make-or-break moment. But the administration is trying to tamp down expectations that the situation will have changed dramatically by then. Officials are already studying how to keep the extra troops in Iraq.

Furthermore, there is a reason that active duty Army generals don’t boss around the civilians in the United States government. Civilian control of the military is a basic principle of our country.

That will require him to force cooperation among agencies that have squabbled through much of the four-year-old war — a tall order for a three-star officer dealing with onetime superiors and Cabinet members. “If necessary, he will kick people in the pants to get things done,” said an officer who works with him. “And he will not be shy about telling his opinion.”

This “good ole boy” talk is a Bush tool used to make violation of our laws seem benign and just plain common sense, just good fun, etc…it is purposely deceptive and dangerous. The appointment of this guy is a decided step in the wrong direction, as is indicated by the term Czar. It is wrong, it is corrupt and dishonest. The Senate should not approve this step.

EVERY SINGLE THING THE MILITARY TOUCHES BECOMES BEYOND THE REACH OF THE CONGRESS, THE PRESS, AND THE PEOPLE. The military is inherently anti-democratic, designed to achieve its ends by force, and is granted total secrecy.

Kick butt, my ass. so to speak. How are you going to feel when this guy struts around Capital Hill with a security detachment of Marines, carrying automatic weapons? How about when he walks his boys over to the Washington Post and tells them what not to publish? How about when he starts “leaning on” US Attorneys to “ensure domestic tranquility”? None of it discoverable by democratic process.

Did you listen to the Republican presidential debates? “double Guantanamo?” Listen, people, we are dealing with crazy people and it is far from over.

We are already seeing the moves to seal off Iraq from the media. You may or may not believe that reporters and photographers are being targeted for attack, but you cannot dispute the fact that the number of reporters there is now down to only 75 (source: Bill Keller); that photographs are now forbidden, that casualty numbers are being manipulated, that the propaganda rules are being changed, that internet communications are now not only censored but forbidden.

What do you think is going on? Do you think that Bush, Rove and Cheney are crawling into a corner and dying? Hardly. Are you watching the defiance of the laws and the Congress and its subpoenas? Hmmm? are you? What else do they have in mind to maintain their control of the United States?
Washington Post:

JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source.

Are the upcoming elections the last chance to reverse the thuggery of the past 6 years? Hello?

What in the world can the Senate be thinking, to roll over for this ploy. This is like giving a stick of dynamite to a 6 year old. Yet the press laps it up and begs for more:

“why did it take so long to find a war czar?”

If Bush’s cabinet and NSC and Joint Chiefs and CENTCOM are incompetent, he should replace them. That is the message the Senate should send him. They should not give another tool to use in subverting our democracy.

Thomas Friedman: US failing by example

A pretty good analogy (NYT Select), actually, as analogies go:

But while the Bush team has been lecturing the Iraqi Shiites to limit de-Baathification in Baghdad, it was carrying out its own de-Democratization in the Justice Department in Washington. We would feel that we had failed in Iraq if we read that Sunnis were being purged from Iraq’s Ministry of Justice by Shiite hard-liners loyal to Moktada al-Sadr — but the moral equivalent of that is exactly what the Bush administration was doing here. What kind of example does that set for Iraqis?

And this wasn’t only a Washington problem. Read Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s outstanding “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” which details the extent to which Americans recruited to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad were chosen, at times, for their loyalty toward Republicanism rather than expertise on Islamism. “Two C.P.A. staffers said that they were asked if they supported Roe v. Wade and if they had voted for George W. Bush,” he wrote.

But this degree of partisanship — loyalty over competence — was destructive in a much bigger way. It also deprived the Bush team of the support it needed when things in Iraq didn’t turn out to be as easy as it expected.

Only a united America could have the patience and fortitude to heal a divided Iraq — and we simply don’t have that today. Why? Because George Bush and Dick Cheney asked everyone to check their politics at the door when it came to Iraq, because victory there was so important — everyone but themselves. They argued that the war in Iraq was the central front of the central struggle of our age — an unusual war, a war against terrorism and the pathologies that produce it — but then they indulged in the most rancid politics as usual at home.

Continuing attacks on Green Zone bode ill for US

More mortar attacks on the Green Zone, with more casualties; this is a persistent trend.

Mortar rounds hammered the U.S.-controlled Green Zone for a second day Wednesday, killing at least two people, wounding about 10 more and raising new fears for the safety of workers at the nerve center of the American mission in Iraq.

Residents of the Green Zone are now routinely wearing helmets and flak jackets.  Housing there is not particularly sturdy, and many residents are worried.

In spite of the attacks, embassy employees complain, most staff members still sleep in trailers that one described as “tin cans” that offer virtually no protection from rocket and mortar fire. The government has refused to harden the roofs because of the cost, one employee said.

Embassy employees have been ordered not to talk about security concerns or precautions with reporters, but three State Department employees in Baghdad discussed the issue.

One official called it “criminally negligent” not to reduce the size of the embassy staff, which a year ago was estimated at 1,000. “What responsible person and responsible government would ask you to put yourself at risk like that? We don’t belong here,” the employee said, adding, “They’re not going to send us home because it’s going to be another admission of failure.”  The employees said their trailers have been surrounded with sandbags, but that nothing has been done to reinforce the roofs to withstand a rocket or mortar hit. When some employees asked during the meeting if they could move into a hardened structure, they were told to wait for the completion of a new embassy that’s still under construction.

“In any other embassy, we would have been evacuated,” one of the employees said. “As always, the U.S. government is reactive, not proactive. They are going to wait until 20 people die, then the people back in Washington will say we have a problem.” 

We have already overstayed our welcome, and it seems like we’re getting further and further behind the eightball.  I hope that General Petraeus has the safety of his soldiers uppermost in his mind.  As far as the Green Zone is concerned,  sometimes fortifications make it difficult to get out, as well as hard to get in.