Oops

What exactly was in that "private message"?

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expressed regret about his country's nuclear test to a Chinese delegation and said Pyongyang would return to international nuclear talks if Washington backs off a campaign to financially isolate the country, a South Korean newspaper reported Friday.

"If the U.S. makes a concession to some degree, we will also make a concession to some degree, whether it be bilateral talks or six-party talks," Kim was quoted as telling a Chinese envoy, the mass- circulation Chosun Ilbo reported, citing a diplomatic source in China.

Kim told the Chinese delegation that "he is sorry about the nuclear test," the newspaper reported.

The delegation led by State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan met Kim on Thursday and returned to Beijing later that day _ ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's arrival in the Chinese capital Friday. China is viewed as a key nation in efforts to persuade the North to disarm, as it is the isolated communist nation's main trading partner.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have a pretty good guess about what the message said.

Dan Made Me Post

I really wasn't planning on posting again tonight. Some days it is like pulling teeth to find enough things to blog about. Other days, the floodgates seem to open and there isn't enough time to cover even a fraction of all the interesting stuff that is out there on the internet. Today has been a feast day with tons of stuff to read and post about. So I was planning to take it easy the rest of the night.

Then Dan Riehl had to go and post this.

While I've only been reading and writing blog-ish for two years, I have managed to figure out that Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit is a Libertarian. And his seemingly now infamous premortem post - also see a follow up here -  is precisely what one would expect from Glenn - his objective, non-GOP gobbling point of view.

I resent the hell out of it when I fight with Liberals and they call me a liar when I mention I'm an Independent and always have been, since initially registering as a Dem for one election 20 some-plus years ago.

I'm a conservative (whatever the hell that actually means, because it seems to mean different things to different people) - Glenn is a Libertarian. I know popular Right-side bloggers who aren't even political beyond the War on Terror.

The GOP and the DNC had a pass during 2004 because blogging was just being discovered as a valuable political tool and the battle lines were clearly drawn among bloggers they sought to prop up. By that, I don't mean they weren't worthy of it, but they were propped up in some cases because they were churning out precisely what the GOP and the DNC wanted people to hear and they were elevated to the MSM, in part, because they were natural allies of individuals already there. That didn't mean those alliances weren't going to one day strain.

Alliance is not what blogging is ultimately all about, unless of course one wants to start a GOP or DNC fetish site to simply spout out the usual talking points. How boring is that?

By and large, most bloggers are just voters engaged in self-publishing, not in publishing for the GOP or the DNC. And both major political parties in America would do well to figure that out sooner, as opposed to later. To paraphrase my Mother, if Instapundit is going to jump off a bridge, (not that I believe he is) am I? Maybe, maybe not. Der Commissar, on the other hand, apparently already did. And good for him, that's the freedom of individual choice. And that's why most of us are here. If I wanted to be a GOP mouthpiece, I'd go work for the GOP. I imagine it pays much better than this.

Please go over and read it all. Dan got me thinking about all the commenters here from the left who cheerfully ask, in their most outraged voices, how much I get paid for posting some opinion that they don't want to read.

The correct answer, which they won't or can't understand, is that I get paid nothing for any of this. I pay out of my own pocket. I also find my own items to post about, I don't belong to a super-secret mailing list like Kos has admitted using. I have a very few fellow bloggers who email me about posts they think might interest me - as I send emails to them when I think I have written something I think they will enjoy, or that I am proud of having written.

But I don't get paid. I don't spout a party line. I've never belonged to a political party in my life. I write approvingly of a Democrat like Joe Lieberman even though he and I would disagree - sharply - on a number of issues. I write disapprovingly about President Bush's stance on illegal immigration. I criticize the left wing because I happen to think they are out of control and foolish. I mostly ignore the far right except to say that I am not fond of Ann Coulter. I berate the slime that call themselves a church (that would be the Westboro folks).

What I am saying here is that I call things as I see them. You may or may not agree with me, that's fine. If you read here because I amuse you, that is also fine. If you read here to "keep an eye on the enemy", as one person has said he does, fine. If you don't like what I write, fine. Go elsewhere. You won't hurt my feelings. But Dan's point is something politicians might really want to consider:

I can only speak for myself, but I don't pony up however many bucks and hours a month it is to serve the GOP. And if they want this blog to be GOP friendly, than as I am a voter, they had better set to figuring out how it is they can best serve me.

I think that's good advice.

For both parties.

Ethics

Candidate appears to be behind a particularly nasty and potentially illegal campaign mailing. Candidate insists he did not have knowledge of illegal activities and fires staffer who, candidate claims, may be behind actions. Candidate's party still calls for the candidate to step aside and withdraw from the race. High-minded and principled response, right?

Republican party response.

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. - Orange County Republican leaders on Thursday called for the withdrawal of a GOP congressional candidate they believe sent a letter threatening Hispanic immigrant voters with arrest.

Tan D. Nguyen denied knowing anything about the letter in an interview Thursday with The Associated Press but said he fired a campaign staffer who may have been responsible for it. Nguyen's attorney said his client had no intention of quitting.

County Republican Chairman Scott Baugh said that after speaking with state investigators and the company that distributed the mailer, he believes Nguyen had direct knowledge of the "obnoxious and reprehensible" letter. He told the AP that the party's executive committee voted unanimously to urge Nguyen to drop out of the race against Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

"I learned information that allows me to draw the conclusion that not only was Mr. Nguyen's campaign involved in this, but that Mr. Nguyen was personally involved in expediting the mailer," Baugh said in a telephone interview.

State and federal officials were investigating the letter, which was written in Spanish and mailed to an estimated 14,000 Democratic voters in central Orange County. It warns, "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

Immigrants who are adult naturalized citizens are eligible to vote.

And should excercise that right and duty proudly. Perhaps one should look at the response of another candidate and another party to a potentially illegal activity for an instructive lesson.

UPDATE: WaPo article here.

Ouch

Don Surber is in the mood to spank a few people.

(He's right. Sending a message by shooting yourself in the head is kind of self-defeating).

A Glimpse Into The Future

This is from FrontPage Magazine, so normally, I wouldn't get too het up about it. But it is a very interesting take on what the Democrats plan if they get control of one or both of the chambers of Congress. It would be political suicide, mind you. It would destroy any chance the Democrats have of being a viable party in the 2008 elections. But this is the party that has consistently overplayed every hand it has been dealt for years. So it is at least cautionary. The fact that some bills have already been introduced is not exactly reassuring, either.

A plan is in place to censure and impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Orchestrated and organized by the radical Left and Congressman John Conyers, Jr., this plan is ready to go should the Democratic Party take control of the House of Representatives in November.

The plan is the ultimate manifestation of left-wing hatred for George W. Bush rooted in the contentious election of 2000. Since failing to defeat Bush in 2004, the Left has focused its efforts on destroying his presidency by assembling a list of charges aimed at impeaching him.

Impeachment plans began seriously coalescing in 2005, after the NY Times published classified aspects of the NSA surveillance program. In mid- December of that year, Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, asked a group of presidential scholars whether President George W. Bush had committed an impeachable offense when he authorized the NSA foreign surveillance program. John Dean, the long-time Bush critic of Watergate fame provided Boxer with the answer she and most other Democrats were looking for: “Bush is the first president to admit an impeachable offense,” he said.

Charles Rangel has already announced he will cut off funding for the war if the Democrats get power (with the magical super power of not hurting the troops while cutting their support out from under them. Neat trick.) So that is already in the air, like the ripe aroma of an overfull port-a-potty on a hot, sunny day. The left is absolutely screaming for this to occur and will make life a living hell for anyone who doesn't toe their line. You can ask Joe Lieberman about that. Are the Democrats fool enough to try this?

They nominated John Kerry, didn't they?

Others Blogging: A Blog For All, Confederate Yankee, The Political Pit Bull, Sister Toldjah,

Charles Rangel has already announced he will cut off funding for the war if the Democrats get power (with the magical super power of not hurting the troops while cutting their support out from under them. Neat trick.) So that is already in the air, like the ripe aroma of an overfull port-a-potty on a hot, sunny day. The left is absolutely screaming for this to occur and will make life a living hell for anyone who doesn't toe their line. You can ask Joe Lieberman about that. Are the Democrats fool enough to try this?

They nominated John Kerry, didn't they?

Others Blogging: A Blog For All, Confederate Yankee, The Political Pit Bull, Sister Toldjah, Iowa Voice, Committees Of Correspondence, Squiggler, Say Anything, The Elephant Bar, Wizbang, Strata-Sphere, STACLU, MK Ham, Wizbang (Different post than the other Wizbang link), Ace of Spades,

UPDATE: Related, Don Surber's latest. A column that caused his newspaper's servers to crash.

I Never Had A Chance

Microsoft just released Internet Explorer 7 after a long, long five year wait since the last release. I was going to make a snarky joke about the first bug being discovered right away. But I never got the chance.

Because the first security bug really was discovered right away.

Despite the deepening of Microsoft's security measures, less than 24 hours after the company's announcement that IE7 had been released, the browser's first vulnerability was reported by security firm Secunia.

According to the company's advisory, the flaw is rated as "less critical," because it does not allow attackers to gain control of a system. However, it does put users at risk for exposure of system and personal information, according to Secunia chief technology officer Thomas Kristensen.

"This is a vulnerability that was in IE6 which Microsoft apparently decided not to patch," he said. "It was a surprise to us to see it wasn't fixed."

The vulnerability allows malicious hackers to sneak code onto users' computers, such as keylogging programs, or to monitor their activity. Because of that, it could be used in phishing scams, Kristensen noted.

"Microsoft has to reconsider this one," he said. "It's not critical because it can't compromise a system, but it is still a potent way to get information off the system of an unsuspecting user."

I 'spect I'll wait a spell afore I jump to install it.

Dow Closes Over 12,000

The Dow Jones industrial average reached the 12,000 mark for a while yesterday. Today it closed above that mark for the first time in history.

The stock market's most prominent benchmark ended the day at 12,011.73, the ninth time in just over two weeks that the Dow has achieved a record high close. The record came one day after the index of 30 blue chip stocks made its first foray past 12,000.

The Dow's latest milestone came on the anniversary of Black Monday in 1987, when the Dow plunged 508 points and also suffered its second-biggest percentage drop in history. The Dow finished that day at 1,793.90, far from Thursday's record.

The finish above 12,000 was the latest sign that the stock market continues a cautious recovery from the losses and despair investors suffered in the early part of this decade. After peaking in early 2000, the Dow and other indexes fell precipitously amid the dot-com collapse, recession and the impact of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Yep, the economy is just limping along. Just ask Cassandra.

UNSC Balloting On Hold For Five Days

The balloting to choose the Latin American member on the UN Security Council has been put on hold for at least five days while a compromise is sought. US Ambassador John Bolton called on the country that has lost 28 of the 29 ballots held so far to withdraw. That would be Venezuela, of course, and they show no signs of doing so. Guatemala will not step aside unless Venezuela does so as well.

After three days and 30 rounds of balloting, Guatemala still led Venezuela by 20 to 30 votes on Thursday. But neither country has achieved the required two-thirds majority in the 192-member U.N. General Assembly.

At issue is an open Latin American seat in the 15-nation Security Council contested by Guatemala, backed by the Bush administration, and Venezuela, which sees the race as a battle against Washington and its U.N. ambassador, John Bolton.

"Mr. Bolton has not been able to keep us out of the race," said Venezuelan U.N. Ambassador Francisco Arias Cardenas.

Armed with petrodollars, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has tried to form an alliance with nations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East to challenge Washington's interests.

Failure to win a council seat would represent a setback for Chavez's ambitions for a bigger international profile.

Several Latin American ambassadors said the voting, which has paralyzed the General Assembly for three days this week, would stop on Friday for other assembly business as well as Monday and Tuesday for the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.

'THEATER OF THE ABSURD'

Guatemalan Foreign Minister Gert Rosenthal said he favored a longer recess and fewer ballots in this "theater of the absurd" but other nations, including Venezuela, disagreed.

Rosenthal said that, as long as Venezuela remained in the race, he had no alternative but to continue.

Bolton agreed and said, "The honorable thing would be for the candidate who has now lost 28 out of 29 votes to withdraw. Venezuela insists on putting everybody through all this — vote after vote after vote."

(T)Hugo is not doing very well at all, is he?

Do Androids Dream Of Electric Orgasms?

Ed Driscoll asks, and gets the answer.

Big Game Hunting In Russia

Allegedly, Russia has an unusual hunting season. Not content with the sorts of seasons American are used to such as "duck season" and "deer season", the Russians sub-divide it further. They appear to have a "drunken bear" season. And no, that doesn't mean the hunter is drunk, it means the bear is.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A Russian region has ordered an inquiry into a report that hunt organizers, keen to make the King of Spain's chances of killing a bear easier, provided a tame one drunk on vodka, a regional spokesman said Thursday.

"The governor has ordered a working group set up…to check the facts published in local press about the killing of the bear," said a spokesman for Vyacheslav Pozgalev, governor of the northwestern Vologda region.

National paper Kommersant carried a letter from Vologda's deputy chief of regional hunting resources management, Sergei Starostin, which accuses hunt organizers of plying a captive bear named "Mitrofan" with vodka-drenched honey and then forcing him from a cage to be shot by Spain's King Juan Carlos I.

Apparently, this is the same kind of hunting that Leonid Brezhnev used to do as well. Although since he was reportedly unsteady, he may have been in much the same state as the bear. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard want to go on the record as opposing giving vodka-laced honey to bears. That's a waste of perfectly good vodka. We firmly believe the bears should have to find their own adult beverages.

Dirty Bomb Threat A Hoax: FBI

The FBI has released the man they interviewed about the internet threats of seven dirty bombs at NFL stadiums this Sunday. They have confirmed that the threat is a hoax and may yet charge the man they questioned.

The FBI made the announcement after agents questioned a 20-year-old Milwaukee man in an effort to determine who made the threats, which were posted on a Web site last week.

"The investigation has determined that this is a hoax. The public should be reassured of their security as they continue to attend sporting events this weekend," said the agencies' joint statement.

The FBI did not immediately say whether charges will be filed against the man they questioned. Milwaukee police contacted the FBI about the man Wednesday night.

"From the information we have, we believe he was involved to some extent, but we don't know at what level," said FBI agent Douglas E. Porrini. He added: "That person was released, but we're not saying that he won't be charged."

By all means, if he had something to do with it, charge him and anyone else involved.

Bearly Able

Well, so much for that idea. State officials in Nevada had the bright idea of keeping bears out of dumpsters. The idea is that bears who can get easy pickings like a nice dumpster full of garbage, won't work to get their normal eats. Needless to say, the bears didn't think too highly of the new requirement to have bear-proof lids on their fast food establishments.

A pair of black bear cubs got more than they bargained for when they went digging for food inside a dumpster at a Nevada campground.

The dumpster's bear-proof lid, which someone had left open, closed on the cubs after they climbed inside [image].

The cubs were discovered after their agitated mother and a third cub were seen patrolling various dumpsters on the site and calls were made to scientists at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Nevada Division of Wildlife (NDOW).

Previous studies by the agencies showed that black bears with access to human leftovers will readily become "couch potatoes" that neglect foraging for their natural foods, which include grasses, berries and pine nuts. To avoid potential conflicts between human and bears, legislation was passed that required human trash be deposited in bear-resistant containers.

"Obviously, when the lids are left open, the dumpsters won't keep the bears out," said Jon Beckmann of WCS. The  Zephyr Cove Campground in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, where the cubs were discovered, will be cited for having other dumpsters on site that were not bear-proofed.

See the way they blame it all on humans? They simply can't admit the ugly truth. Bears can pick locks.

Scotch And Soda Costs How Much?

Scotch and soda, mud in your eye.
Baby, do I feel high,
oh, me, oh, my. Do I feel high.
Dry martini, jigger of gin.
Oh, what a spell you've got me in,
oh, my. Do I feel high.
People won't believe me.
They'll think that I'm just braggin'.
But I could feel the way I do
and still be on the wagon.
(Dave Guard - The Kingston Trio - Scotch and Soda)

Bonhams, the London auction house, will be selling some old booze in November. How old? Well, nobody is quite certain of that. The label on the bottle of Scotch whiskey bears the name of a company that went out of business in the 1850's. It may well have been produced by a successor company, however. Regardless, it is quite old and is expected to bring in between $9,500 and $18,500 when it is sold.

The label reads "Glenavon Special Liqueur Whisky Bottled by the Distillers" — and Glenavon ceased operating in the 1850s.

Even if it was bottled by a related or sucessor distillery, "authentic bottles of Scotch from the 1870s are extremely rare", said Charles MacLean, a Bonhams consultant and leading expert on whisky.

The bottle has been in the family of a woman in Ireland for several generations.

It is an unusual size, slightly smaller than the traditional 75-centilitre bottle, and is made from olive-green glass.

The liquid inside appears to be pale gold, and the level is surprisingly high for an old bottle, almost to the neck. 

It seems appropriate to remind people that old booze is not necessarily good booze.

Fried Coke

Is it just me, or does this not even sound remotely interesting? A new taste sensation at state fairs: Fried Coke.

The gooey Coke-battered nuggets topped with cola syrup won the "most creative" title at the Texas state fair in Dallas last month. Since then, the deep-fried phenomenon has spread to North Carolina and Arizona.

"We've been getting calls from everywhere since we introduced it," Elizabeth Martin, a spokeswoman for the North Carolina fair, told the Dallas Morning News. "Everyone wants to know where they can get it."

Fried treats are as big of a draw at state fairs as the rides and prize-winning farm animals. Twinkies, cookies and even pickles are stuck with a stick, dipped in batter and then seared in the deep fryer.

Fried Coke's inventor, concessionaire Abel Gonzales Jr., is a creative fryer whose experiments have proven popular. Last year he sold 20,000 fried peanut butter, jelly and banana sandwiches, the Morning News reported. Fried Coke looks to be an even bigger hit: he sold 16,000 cups of the sticky balls in the first two weeks of the fair, which runs through Oct. 22.

Gonzales changed his recipe to make the dough more spongy so it would absorb more gooey syrup. Yuck. Oh well, if you don't want fried Coke, you can always try whipping up a batch of original Coke. It would appear that the original secret recipe has been discovered. Of course, the DEA might want to have a word with you if you do mix some up, since they kind of frown on the cocaine part of the original recipe.

Is Chavez In Trouble?

Fascinating bit of news here. Many experts believe (T)Hugo Chavez may be in economic difficulty because of his free-spending attempt to buy a seat on the UN Security Council. According to these experts, Chavez desperately needs the price of oil to rise or at least not continue to slide.

OTTAWA — Count Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez among the most aggressive of price hawks when OPEC ministers gather for an emergency meeting tomorrow in an effort to agree on production cuts to stem the slide in crude prices.

More than most members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Mr. Chavez is desperate to the stop the erosion of oil profits, which he has spread widely to support his popularity at home and abroad.

He has used the country's petrodollars to fund social programs that have garnered him tremendous support among the poor in Venezuela, where he faces an increasingly competitive election in seven weeks. He also financed international aid commitments that bolstered his image abroad, including his as-yet unsuccessful attempt this week to win a seat on the United Nations Security Council.

But Chavez-watchers say Latin America's champion of the underdog will have to rein in his ambitions and make some tough choices if crude prices fall much further.

"They're totally stretched," said Riordan Roett, professor of Latin American studies at Johns Hopkins University.

"I think Chavez is about to hit a wall in that his commitments in Venezuela, but also his commitments throughout the region, are based on very high and continuing high oil prices," he said.

"Unless he is able to convince other members of OPEC to have a sharp drop in production — which I think is what he needs to achieve his goal — Venezuela is in trouble."

Now news just came out that the Venezuelan oil minister is saying that OPEC has agreed to a one million barrel per day production cut. But it is only that minister saying it so far and no details have emerged.

"Most important here is that we believe that OPEC have the consensus to cut one million bpd," Ramirez said in English on his arrival in Doha ahead of the cartel's extraordinary meeting Thursday.

"We are going to cut one million bpd," he said, adding that the move would help to stabilise the market.

Asked if the cut would be to quotas or actual production, Ramirez said: "We are going to discuss this matter inside OPEC."

This is very, very interesting indeed. If Chavez does not get the production cut and the price support he needs, he could well find himself in a world of hurt on election day in Venezuela. If he does not get price support and does not get the UNSC seat, it really could mean the end of his plans. One hopes the State Department is making a few calls to the Saudis.