Here you will find a goldfish that resembles Adolf Hitler.

Cute, right? Baby otters! Doesn’t it tug on your heart strings to see them behind that fence? Set them free! Animals should be free!

No! They should be locked in cages forever. Those baby otters will grow into adult otters. Some of them probably male. And while the otters in the video happen to be river otters, if adult male river otters are anything at all like adult male sea otters, they should be kept away from all other animals at any cost. Adult male sea otters, it turns out, are horrible, terrible, despicable monsters.

A warning: what you are about to read, should you choose to continue, is much worse than the accounts of otter-on-human attacks that got so much press last year. It comes from a report that Heather Harris of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently wrote in the zoology journal Aquatic Mammals about otter behavior she and a team of colleagues observed during a two year study of animals in Monterey Bay in California. You will wish this account was of an isolated incident. It is not. Similar events were observed and logged on 19 separate occasions.

A weaned harbor seal pup was resting onshore when an untagged male sea otter approached it, grasped it with its teeth and forepaws, bit it on the nose, and flipped it over. The harbor seal moved toward the water with the sea otter following closely. Once in the water, the sea otter gripped the harbor seal’s head with its forepaws and repeatedly bit it on the nose, causing a deep laceration. The sea otter and pup rolled violently in the water for approximately 15 min, while the pup struggled to free itself from the sea otter’s grasp. Finally, the sea otter positioned itself dorsal to the pup’s smaller body while grasping it by the head and holding it underwater in a position typical of mating sea otters. As the sea otter thrust his pelvis, his penis was extruded and intromission was observed. At 105 min into the encounter, the sea otter released the pup, now dead, and began grooming.

Grooming! Like some kind of psychopathic serial-murderer human. Like Dexter! Or Christian Bale in American Psycho!

And sometimes, the otters stick around, using the lifeless corpse of their baby-seal victims as sex dolls. Sometimes for as long as seven days! I mean! It’s like something out of a Dolcett Girls fantasy post.

Scientists think the behavior might have something to do with a mysterious increase in otter mortality rates, one that seems to be disproportionately claiming females, leaving many males with no one to have sex with. Like some frat house in a Saw movie or something. It probably has to do with global warming. So this is somehow our fault. It sounds like something that would be our fault.

Sea otters! A favorite of animal lovers everywhere! I really don’t know what to do. I’ll never be able to watch one these of these fascinating, playful animals slide down a muddy embankment or frolic in a bed of kelp or lie on its back, cracking open a clam shell with a rock the same way again. I’m out of exclamation points. I’m just sick about this.

“Yet, increasingly, the pundits who had been laughing at her antics are beginning to say that she could be a candidate for the Republican nomination, especially if Ms. Palin decides not to run.”
 — Run, Michele Bachmann, run! Two things: 1. “Increasingly” alert. (Where!?) 2. Yay! Yes please, on all counts!

Why do our young people hate soup? “Soup consumption by those under 25 is declining twice as fast as the under 25 demographic is declining relative to the total population. Between 2001 and 2010 the US population under the age of 25 declined as a percentage of the overall population by 60 bps while the percentage of soup consumers under the age of 24 (defined as anyone who consumed canned soup in the past 6 months) declined by 130 bps, or over double the decline relative to the overall population.” Hispanics aren’t helping either, “soup penetration in Hispanic households has declined from 50% in 2001 to 47% in 2010, while average US household soup penetration has actually increased from 63% to 64%.”

“I grew up hard. I picked cotton and plowed with the mule and fixed the cars and played with the guitar and the piano.”
 — Mississippi Delta blues pianist Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins died yesterday at his home in Austin, Texas. He had played with the likes of Muddy Waters and B.B. King and reportedly taught Ike Turner to play the piano. He released his last album, Joined at the Hip, a duet with harmonica player Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, last year. Perkins was 97.

“Although boys’ and girls’ brains show differences around age 10, during puberty key parts of their brains become more similar, according to recent government research. And, rather than growing more slowly, boys’ brains instead are simply developing differently.”

Don’t try to tell me you don’t like this song. Don’t try to say that it’s too earnest and simplistic or that the big dumb chord progression is too big and dumb or that Kevin Cronin sounds too much like a dweeb or that his clothes or his acting in this video are too ridiculous for you to take anything he’s ever done seriously ever. Don’t try to tell me that you never wrote this song’s lyrics into a love note to an old ex-girlfriend you were trying to win back. Don’t try to tell me that you don’t turn up the volume and sing along aloud every time it comes on the radio when you’re driving in a car by yourself. I won’t believe you. Because it’s just too perfect, this song. It’s just too good at what it’s trying to do to make you do anything but give in and swear your allegiance. And because you’re an American, and you lied about having lost your virginity before you actually lost it. 30 years ago this week, REO Speedwagon’s “Keep On Loving You” was the number one song in the country. And when you really think about, if you’re honest with yourself, it’s pretty much stayed that way since.

It’s not just me, right? These prehistoric rabbits are totally creepy, RIGHT? [Shudders.]

by Michael Brendan Dougherty

When your country fires 122 of 124 Tomahawk missiles into a country in a single day, and your pilots are doing bombing runs, then your country is leading a war on that other country. That’s true even if the French President got his jets there first, and your president only announced it in a radio address from Brazil.

So there are some problems with this.

First: Seriously? A third war in the Muslim world?

Second: Exactly what we’re doing isn’t clear. Obama has said “Gaddafi must go,” while the military says Gaddafi is not on a “targeting list.” (Who is?) The U.N. authorized a No-Fly-Zone with the explicit intention of protecting civilians, and achieving a cease-fire. But the rebels in Benghazi are lining up for another attack on Gaddafi’s forces. And if this is a No-Fly-Zone why are Americans firing on buildings and Toyotas? Are Libyans… flying those?

Third: How was this decided? It was awfully quick. Michael Cohen, of the American Security Project, points out:

First of all, from everything that is being reported (and Josh Rogin as usual is doing yeoman’s work on this front) it appears that the White House only made the decision to go to war in the last several days. Consider that for a second; for weeks the US was resisting the use of force in Libya — and then within what appears to be a 96-hour period we went from opposition to intervention to supportive of intervention to escalation far beyond a no-fly zone to actually going to war. And all of this happened without any national debate, any serious consultation with Congress and any strong statement of objectives and purpose by President Obama.

As [James] Fallows points out [at The Atlantic], the only debate that seemed to happen was the one in the Oval Office… to change the President’s mind about the use of force. And it should be noted that the person who seemed to have the most impact on shifting the President’s view was the woman he beat in the 2008 Democratic primary, in large measure, because of her misguided support for another military intervention that wasn’t properly thought thru.

Obama’s decision to commit forces contradicts his statements during the campaign that “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Some liberals are pretty pissed about this.

Fourth: Who are these rebels we are fighting for? Are they what The Washington Times describes as “learned” liberals who say, cutely, “We love America to bits” or are they the type of East Libyans who decided to haul off to Iraq for the chance to kill Americans. Probably both. But who knows? We don’t, and that’s not something we deliberated about before launching this.

Fifth: Even if Obama wants this to take “days not weeks,” we can’t be sure that it will go that way. If Gaddafi manages to hold out — not unthinkable when there are Libyans that feel loyal to him and threatened by the rebels — the ineffectiveness of the No-Fly Zone and the “humiliation” it risks for Obama/Sarkozy/Cameron will be used as the argument for getting boots on the ground. Suddenly we will be left rebuilding a divided tribal region that pretends to be a single country. Poor King Idris who once led Cyrenaican nationalists during World War II is said to have cried when the British informed him that he must also become Emire of Tripolitania. If the United States follows the Pottery Barn rule and tries to glue Libya back together, we’ll also be crying.

Sixth: There are plenty of other revolts happening in the world. Yemen, Bahrain, maybe Morocco. There are plenty of other terrible leaders who kill people. Now that we’ve intervened in one civil war, it can become a tactic of rebellions to appeal for multi-national-sponsored air support. Exactly how do we plan on distinguishing the just from the unjust? Obama has announced no strategic principle on which he is basing the decision to commit our troops, money, and honor to other people’s struggles.

I wouldn’t forbid you from taking the same position as Hillary Clinton, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Samantha Power and Paul Wolfowitz. We have freedom here. And maybe Obama will really wrap this up in a few days, and there will be no truly nasty unintended consequences, and only basically better-than-Gaddafi guys will be in power in Libya ever after. And of course, you can believe that our bombs will only fall on people who deserved to be killed by American bombs. That’s your faith-based initiative if you want it.

But, if you maybe think this was a bad idea, or at least it is being carried out badly, you are in good company. The group of people who are pissed about our Libyan adventure runs from Dennis Kucinich through Glenn Greenwald and Josh Marshall to George Will, Timothy P. Carney and Rand Paul.

Michael Brendan Dougherty is a contributing editor to /The American Conservative

— he and they were both against Iraq too.

by Abe Sauer

“We eat, therefore we hunt.” — Sarah Palin, Going Rogue

In December, after an episode of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” The Awl, along with many in America’s hunting community, asked some questions about the former Governor’s longstanding claim of being an avid and experienced hunter.

At some point, all hunters are inexperienced, and even experienced ones are often unsafe, but being unlicensed is more than just illegal, it’s detrimental to natural resource efforts. Palin herself believes this, writing in 2010’s America by Heart that “…it’s important that we’re managing our fish and wildlife resources for abundance in the Last Frontier.”

Curious if Palin was licensed for her 2010 on-air caribou adventure, or, for that matter, any of her “lifetime of hunting” trips, we submitted an open records request to Alaska’s Dept. of Fish & Game. Our request covered the years 1980 to 2010, from Palin’s teenage years as “Sarah Heath” to today.

It turns out, Palin has pulled a number of licenses in the last 30 years. There are 12 of them, though not all of them strictly for hunting.

Our records request revealed that the former Governor has pulled one type AA-02 permit (“Resident Hunt”) and five type AA-04 permits (“Resident Sport Fish and Hunt”). Since Alaska keeps its kill reports anonymous for some reason, it is unknown what she took or if the Hunting & Fishing-type licenses, the vast majority of Palin’s permits, were used for sport fishing or for hunting.

Here is the entire report.

1994, 008469, AA-02, Resident Hunting, 03/11/1994
2004, 4338956, AA-02, Resident Hunting, 08/13/2004

1991, 153987, AA-02, Resident Sport Fish & Hunt, 03/15/1991
1992, 184424, AA-01, Resident Sport Fishing, 06/19/1992
1993, 059460, AA-04, Resident Sport Fish & Hunt, 01/05/1993
1993, 497733, AA-04, Resident Sport Fish & Hunt, 08/24/1993
2000, 0287171, AA-01, Resident Sport Fishing, 06/30/2000
2002, 2226528, AA-04, Resident Sport Fish & Hunt, 07/12/2002
2003, 3027590, AA-04, Resident Sport Fish & Hunt, 07/06/2003
2006, 6018936, AA-04, Resident Sport Fish & Hunt, 05/03/2006
2007, 7005664, AA-04, Resident Sport Fish & Hunt, 09/01/2007
2010, 0114858, AA-04, Resident Sport Fish & Hunt, 07/02/2010

That Palin had no fishing or hunting permits until she was into her late 20s, well after she was married to Todd, calls into question her claims about being a lifelong hunter, or her father’s claims about having properly taught her to hunt.

But far more interesting is the number of commercial-type BB “Resident Crewmember” licenses Palin has pulled, just 10 in her lifetime. These are the licenses required for going on board a commercial fishing boat for those who are not Alaska Commercial Fisheries Entry Commission entry permit holders. (That’s the kind of permit that Todd Palin purchased from his grandfather.)

1988, 783835, BB-30, Resident Crewmember, 06/25/1988
1989, 714790, BB-30, Resident Crewmember, 06/25/1989
1995, 36017, BB-30, Resident Crewmember, 06/27/1995
1996, 6035224, BB-30, Resident Crewmember, 07/01/1996
2003, 3031601, BB-30, Resident Crewmember, 07/07/2003
2004, 4024098, BB-30, Resident Crewmember, 06/30/2004
2006, 6018417, BB-36, Resident 7-Day Crewmember, 07/06/2006
2007, 7022744, BB-30, Resident Crewmember, 07/04/2007
2009, 9030122, BB-30, Resident Crewmember, 07/05/2009
2010, 0033118, BB-30, Resident Crewmember, 06/30/2010

Part of Palin’s image is not just that she and her husband own a commercial fishing business, but that Palin gets her hands dirty out on the boat, hauling in the catch. When her candidacy was announced in 2008, a great deal of myth-making took place, painting Palin as a rough and rouged commercial fisher, braving the high seas and earning her keep with tough physical labor.

There is good reason Palin probably wouldn’t be out on a commercial fishing vessel much after those two times in the late 1980s. In 1989 she gave birth to the couple’s first child and for the next decade had three more (1990, 1994, 2001), while at the same time running for numerous offices.

In an MSNBC documentary during the 2008 election, Palin friend Bob Lester said, “Todd is a commercial fisherman and Sarah spends hours out in his boat, helping haul in hundreds of pounds of salmon, something they still do.”

In that same documentary, Palin biograher Kaylene Johnson said, “Todd and Sarah both share a love for the outdoors. And they share a love for the Alaskan way of life. And they commercial fish together, every summer.”

In a 2008 People interview, Todd said, “When she’s working for me out there in my fishing boat, she’s pretty vulnerable. It’s my element.” To which Palin responded: “He’s the boss out there on the boat while we commercial fish. Yeah. That’s a different story then.”

Also in 2008, a Ledger profile of the “rugged” Palins noted that Todd was often accompanied by Sarah, “along to help with the rugged work aboard a 32-foot fishing boat.”

Palin has played the part, giving numerous press conferences from the deck of a boat.

ABC’s “why she resigned” interview was done from the deck of a commercial fishing boat “dressed in a white T-shirt and overall waders… all the while plucking salmon from the family fishing nets aboard a boat…”

In July 2009, Palin told reporters gathered for a press event that she has been helping her husband Todd, a licensed commercial fisherman, “for decades.” That press op was on July 7, 2009. Palin’s crewmember permit was from two days previous.

Last year, Politics Daily reinforced the image, writing, “Palin said she wrote the post on a commercial fishing boat in Alaska where she’s ‘working my butt off for my own business, merely asking the Democrat politicos and their liberal friends in the media: ‘What’s the plan, man?’”

There is even stock footage of Sarah Palin commercial fishing for sale. (“Approx: 30 min. DV-CAM Tape (B Roll) Cost: $2000.00; We can also provide shorter clips. Cost: $40.00 per second”).

In the book Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down, Kaylene Johnson writes, “During the summers after graduation and throughout college, Sarah helped Todd fish commercially in Bristol Bay. They fished from a twenty-six-foot skiff with no cabin… it was the most physical and dangerous work Sarah had ever undertaken.”

Johnson goes on to tell of Palin breaking her hand and immediately returning to work, toughing out 100-mile-per-hour winds, and even how Palin would take the boat out herself to fish while Todd was working his oilfield job.

Palin graduated from the University of Idaho in 1987, and did pull commercial fishing permits in 1988 and 1989. She did not, however, have any permits for any period “throughout college.”

Todd himself has lent credence to the “every year” myth, telling Fox News’ Greta Von Susteren in September, 2008, “We’ve commercial fished all the years that Sarah and I were married and then for many years before our marriage. And that’s about a four-week season, and so we adjust our schedules to do commercial fishing.”

In that same interview, Todd tells Van Susteren that, yes, that year, 2008, “we” had again commercially fished their spot, the one that Todd’s family had long fished. Palin had no license in 2008.

The genealogy of the Palin family’s fishing tradition is on display thanks to a 1999 appeal filed by Todd’s mother, Blanche Kallstrom, claiming sufficient “points” for a 1977 Bristol Bay Drift Gill Net Entry Permit. The state denied Kallstrom her permit (two decades later) in part because “prior to 1973” she “had no documented participation in the Bristol Bay drift gill net fishery.”

In the denial letter, the state of Alaska repeatedly points out that Sarah’s in-laws had little respect for licensing, noting, “Except for [Todd’s maternal grandfather], none of the applicant’s family held a gear license in the drift net fishery for 1967” and that “Participation in a fishery without a required license is unlawful and generally not entitled to credit toward an entry permit.” Kallstrom’s defense: “I didn’t know I needed one.” (This final appeal denial came three years before the Alaska Supreme Court ruled, on an appeal, that Kallstrom had no claim against the government for emotional distress she had suffered after she accidentally poisoned a child with lye at an alcohol abuse transitional care facility dance in 1993.)

Probably the most interesting detail of the 20-years-in-the-making report: “Blanche Kallstrom has renewed her interim-use permit and fished each year through 1995. Beginning in 1996 the applicant has emergency transferred her permit each year due to a chronic medical condition.”

The report is a lot of legal mumbo jumbo and Alaskan fishing licensing minutia, but for those interested in the “decades-long” Palin family’s fishing history that the former Governor brags about all the time, including (and especially) transcribed testimony from Todd’s grandfather Al, it’s a page turner. PDF here.

* * *

Palin’s office did not respond to an inquiry about her licensing history, but in her bestseller “Going Rogue” Palin includes several pictures of herself hunting and fishing (with no dates), including this shot, the caption of which suggests that she is on the boat every summer (and is yet worded so that it doesn’t technically claim that).

Palin has run afoul of Alaskan permitting rules. In 1993, the future Governor pleaded no contest to the charge of failing to register as a set gill net permit holder (which is a technical way of saying commercial fishing without a license). Mistakenly noting it as a felony, The Anchorage Daily wrote of the incident:

“Palin explained the fishing violation by saying that she had been a crew member but took over the permit for that season from her sister-in-law. Palin then forgot to switch her registration from that of a crew member to a permit holder, she said.

But according to the records from Alaska, Palin actually had no crewmember license for 1993. She had not had one since 1989 and would not again have one until 1995 — the year she was running for reelection to the Wasilla City Council.

That six of Palin’s ten total lifetime commercial fishing licenses have come in the last seven years, while she was running for high office, unravels the story that Palin is some kind of old ocean hand. Four of the total ten permits came during or after her campaigns for governor and vice-president.

There is certainly a lot more to a commercial fishing business than pulling fish into a boat. There’s no doubt that Palin has assisted with her family’s business, even when not legally at sea. She certainly has not wholly concocted some fairy tale about her outdoorsmanship. But what Palin’s licenses do seem to paint is a picture of a candidate who has used a few experiences to justify an image makeover that appealed to a political demographic. In other words, the same thing that every politician has done since time immemorial.

Abe Sauer can be reached at abesauer at gmail dot com.