I've always been a bit of an Anglophile. I guess I just loved the very thought of England, the island nation that just could not be brought down. Spain and it's mighty armada, failed. So did Hitler. Hardy seamen, if only middling good soldiers (Wellington was a fluke, Montgomery a total ass). A country that produced Churchill, for all his faults a truly great man.
However.
England has been sliding into the worst form of nanny-state socialism. National health care that simply does not work. Rampant political correctness run amok. And now yielding the first line in the battle against crime.
They are giving tickets to burglars. No arrest. No jail. Same with a host of other offenses. Statutory rape? Ticket. Arson? Ticket. Vandalism? Ticket. So on and so on for more than 60 offenses.
Sorry, England. Bad idea, Rudy Giuliani had it right. Crack down on the minor offenses and it heads off the major ones. Let the little ones go, and the criminals move on to bigger crimes.
Damn I wish I had visited England when I had the chance years ago. Now I am not too sure.
UPDATE: From the American Spectator comes this article. The author has some totally horrifying details on just how bad it has gotten over there. The article also invokes Rudy's methods. Remember, you read it here first!
Gettysburg borough council members cheerfully agreed to sell themselves to any takers on Monday.
Well, that's how I read it. Actually, they voted to accept a $1,000,000 guarantee (read bribe) to allow a casino to be built next to the hallowed ground sanctified by the blood of men at least 1,000 times better than they are. Men who paid with their lives to free Negro slaves they did not even think of as fellow citizens. Men on the other side who fought, not for slavery, but for what they thought of as their states rights.
Are You Kidding Me?
Blue Crab Boulevard's hard working Magic 8-Ball photographer managed to capture the following photo of unidentified borough council members soliciting "guarantees" (*wink, wink*) from prospective clients bidders.
Was that offensive?
GOOD.
Wandering about the web in search of new and interesting things is one of the many services we here at Blue Crab Boulevard do so well.
Today, we found a special new site that, while not actually an official Yale site yet, will be soon. If Richard Levin has anything to say about it. Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to present:
TALIBAN REUNITED!
Have a nice day!
Having never experienced this sort of thing before, I just got off the phone with my hosting company. This weird incoming traffic may (or may not be - not sure yet) a DDOS attack on Blue Crab Boulevard. Blue Host is looking into it.
UPDATE: Well, it's at the annoying but survivable, wait and see stage. Any real visitors to the site, please leave a comment just to say hi. That way I know I'm not just talking to 'bots!
This is one of the most blatant lying headlines ever:
"Americans in Iraq face deadliest day in months"
Read the article and discover that nine servicemen died, while three more are missing. So a total of twelve. Except one little problem. Eight of the twelve casualties occurred from a truck accident with no enemy action involved. For the math impaired that means 3/4 or seventy-five percent were caused by a traffic accident.
Tragic. Absolutely. Every, single death is tragic. But that does not mean what the Times wants you to think. We are not losing over there if 3/4 of our casualties are due to a traffic accident.
Look at this. By the New York Times Logic we have already lost all fifty states, and then some.
The New York Times lies. It is not getting better. I have no idea if the author of the article or the headline writer is at fault.
H/T Confederate Yankee.
British budget airline Jet2.com has this on it's website:
Jet2.com condemns French Strike Action and calls for lazy frogs to get back to work!
Thousands of people throughout the country are today cursing the French Air Traffic Control Strikers for ruining their holiday/business plans.
On behalf of every holiday maker & business person heading overseas today that has been indefinitely delayed due to this strike action, our boss Philip Meeson puts the following questions to the French:
- What exactly are you striking about? Or just in case you don’t understand that “pouvez-vous nous expliquer pourquoi exactement êtes-vous en grève…?”
- After a token stoppage why can’t you just sort the matter out amicably without bringing thousands of people around the world (who, I would like to add give your country huge economic wealth) in to the argument?
You choose to do the job you do and it's appalling that you are taking advantage of your dominant position by neglecting the responsibility you have to your customers…yes that’s right, holidaymakers pay your wages.
Philip also added, "Whilst France is undeniably a beautiful country (with equally good food and beer I hasten to add) we are appalled and quite frankly tired of the Air Traffic Controllers old fashioned attitude to dealing with any issues they may have."
In short we urge the French Air Traffic Controllers to get back to work or get another job.
They also have this picture, worth 1,000 words as they say in the caption:
Reproduced in it's entirity before they make it disappear. I LOVE those guys!
"(I)nstead of telling the truth about Islam and demanding that the Muslim world observes certain standards, you have westerners beating their breasts and saying, 'We can't judge you, we can't expose you, we can't challenge you.' And here in the west you have a dangerous misuse of western concepts such as religious tolerance and cultural sensitivity so that one kind of hate speech is seen as something that must be rigorously protected. That means, principally, lies about America and lies about Jews."
A radical right-winger? A hardcore Republican? A Brown-shirted thug?
How about emerita professor of psychology and women's studies at the City University of New York, author and feminist, Phyllis Chesler? (Mind you, the feminist establishment these days don't want to know her as one of them these days. Even though she helped establish feminism).
Of all places to find this interview, it was published by the Guardian, the (very) left leaning British paper.
Read the whole thing.
The Iranians are announcing one major weapons test after another. A couple of super torpedoes within a few days, but now we have the absolute capper: The super, invisible flying boat.
In a related story, the Iranian president announced that Iran has installed multiple launch whizzbangs, equipped with paddle wheels, to, in his words: "Bring the Great Satan's puny fleet to the bottom of the sea, Allah willing."
The fun started last night when all of a sudden fonts and typefaces went wonky on my home computer. So I started trying to check settings in WordPress and the plug ins I have installed. In the process, editing got weird, then the spellchecker disappeared. Well, it popped up, but nothing was in the window.
At the other computer, fonts were OK, but still no spellchecker.
So I reinstalled the plug-in.
Still no spellchecker. So I installed yet another spellchecker. That works. I think. But I don't know how much spyware the damned thing can with since the download site was full of pop-ups, pop-unders and miscellaneous hijack attempts.
Yeesh. At least he spellchecker is better than the other one. I think.
Well, Tom Delay has announced his resignation. With all the usual warm and fuzzy statements of respect and support from Republicans and the pro forma denunciations from the Democrats.
Does anyone in their right mind doubt that the President and the Republican party leadership pressured Delay to resign? He just won a primary - decisively. He just vowed to win re-election. And he just resigned. He was pressured to do so.
It's called housecleaning, and the Republicans actually do it. They did it when Trent Lott said something incredibly stupid, on the record, then did not offer a real apology in a timely fashion. They did it when they banished Pat Buchanan to the outskirts.
Let's compare for a moment.
Cynthia McKinney ignores a cop, then punches him. Does the Democratic party leadership object? *crickets*
Robert Byrd compares administration officials to Nazis, on the floor of the Senate. Does the Democratic party leadership object? *crickets*
We could go on and on here. The bottom line here is that a party that can not be trusted to run itself and discipline it's own misbehaving members, wants to run national security.
We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are not, believe it or not, Republican. We believe in and support things that automatically deny us a membership card in the VRWC. But we do trust the Republicans a lot more than we trust a party that cannot perform it's own housecleaning.
UPDATE: 4/6/2006 - corrected typo. Mispelled Mckinney as McKinnon. I have no idea why……
I'm having a slew of problems with my editor plug-in at the moment. All of a sudden there is a large gap between title and body of a post. I just did a re-install, so hopefully it is fixed.
Lawmakers in Northwestern Pakistan have approved a ban on kite-flying. While it sounds kind of weird on the surface, it turns out there is a rather good reason. Last year seven people were killed by metal and glass coated kite strings.
"Many of the deaths due occurred in Lahore, where metal-coated strings often cause electricity outrages when they fall on power lines."
It seems that some competitive types in the kite flying community use the metal and glass coated strings to cut other kite-flyer’s kite strings.
Well, that ranks right up there in intelligence with the custom of shooting live ammunition into the air to celebrate.
Well, there’s that theme thing again. Today seems to be India in the news. More specifically, Indian Politicians.
It seems that the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party government in the Indian state of Rajasthan has approved a textbook for use in the state’s schools. The textbook is geared to 14-year old students. In the book, women are compared with donkeys. The donkeys are more favorably treated.
"A donkey is like a housewife … In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents’ home, you’ll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master," (reports the Times of India).
Officials say the wording was done in "good humor". The women’s wing of the party is not laughing.
This may well explain the apparent enthusiasm Indian politicians are directing toward investigating model’s breasts. My guess is they aren’t getting to investigate breasts too often at home these days.
Well, the weird traffic I noted yesterday is still hitting my stats counters. Lots of hits from search engines originating mostly out of India looking for "wardrobe malfunctions". I have no idea why this has become such a big deal, unless it is related to this article that came across the wires today.
It seems the Indian Government, who obviously have entirely too much time on their hands, are planning to investigate whether the wardrobe malfunctions happened ‘accidently on purpose’. Good idea, folks, spend time and resources investigating a model’s breasts instead of addressing , say, poverty. Blue Crab Boulevard did not, and will not, link to the actual photos of the model involved. If you have seen the pictures, she looks upset, not like she was in on anything. I’m beginning to wonder if all this search engine activity is being generated by the Indian politicians investigating.
Not that it’s unusual for politicians (in any country, apparently) to want to spend time investigating model’s beasts. Solving real problems is much too hard and look how easy it is to get headlines!
But there’s much better porn available, kids……
Crime, Politics, World news | Gaius Tuesday, 4 April , 2006 | 
Comments Off 
