The Magic Hat Loses Its Magic

It had to happen sooner or later, but the corner it comes from will sting. John Kerry has very publicly lost the support of Ted Kennedy. The swimmer ditched the boater.

WASHINGTON –Senator Edward M. Kennedy Monday dropped his public commitment to support Senator John F. Kerry in a 2008 presidential race, saying that he won't wait "indefinitely" for Kerry to declare his intentions while the Democratic primary field takes shape.

Kennedy said he doesn't currently plan to endorse another candidate and still might support Kerry if Kerry decides to run. But in an hourlong interview with the Globe's Washington bureau, Kennedy offered strong praise for two of Kerry's possible presidential rivals: senators Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, calling them "formidable figures" who are connecting with rank-and-file Democrats.

Kennedy said his oft-stated commitment to support Kerry again was based on the assumption that Kerry would state his intentions by early 2007. Since Kerry pushed back his decision in the wake of following an election-eve "botched joke" that damaged his public standing, however, Kennedy said he has informed Kerry that he may get behind another Democrat for president.

I'm not sure that it's a bad thing to not have Ted Kennedy behind one, but that's a different discussion. Since Kerry really was dreaming to think he'd get another shot anyway, this really isn't a big surprise. Given Kennedy's past history for abandoning people, Kerry should just be happy Ted wasn't driving and go back to being an obscure Senator from the deep blue Northeast. There aren't anymore rabbits in that hat of yours, Kerry. If there ever were any to begin with.

UPDATE: Others: The Moderate Voice, PoliBlog , Forward Movement, Captain's Quarters, Assorted Babble, Just One Minute, Sister Toldjah, Redstate, Macsmind, Dean Barnett,

No, No, No, Ho, Ho, Ho

A British vicar has barred a man dressed as Father Christmas from attending a Christmas carol service at his church. Apparently, the vicar of the church in Blandford, Dorset has a no ho policy.

Reverend Tim Storey said he told Henry Cuff, a member of volunteer group the Lions Club, to disrobe because he wanted to "reclaim the Christian story of the birth of Jesus Christ as being the heart of the celebration".

"I do not believe that Father Christmas should be part of church services any more than Santa's grotto should have a manger and a baby Jesus present," Storey said in a statement.

But Cuff labelled the move "political correctness gone mad."

"If he can have big screen football in church, why can't he have Santa Claus in church?" he demanded.

He said he had been handing out sweets to local children before the church service.

We can report that the Blandford, Dorset Santa Dash Coordinating Council (DSDCC) has just officially changed the final destination of this year's Santa Dash. The run will end at the church. The Council requests that members please bring their own accessories as none will be provided.

Ho, ho, ho!

Flash: Everything In The Whole Wide World….

….Is caused by global warming. In the latest trivialization, it is now being blamed for the collapse of dozens and dozens of gingerbread houses. No, honest, AFP says so.

Gingerbread houses latest victim of global warming

STOCKHOLM (AFP) - Sweet-toothed Swedes who have spent hours constructing edible Christmas gingerbread houses are seeing their creations collapse in the Scandinavian country's unusually damp winter, suppliers said.

"The damp weather spells immediate devastation for gingerbread houses. The problem is the mild winter," spokesman at Sweden's leading gingerbread wholesaler Anna's, Aake Mattsson, told Swedish news agency TT.

Gingerbread houses are a popular Christmas tradition in Sweden and across the Nordic countries, with many people buying slabs of pre-baked gingerbread from stores which they decorate and stick together using icing sugar and brightly coloured confectionery.

What a tragedy. (Of course experienced gingerbread house builders say the problem might have a bit more to do with a too-liberal use of the frosting which imparts dampness to the gingerbread. But that would ruin the cool headline, so they stuck that at the bottom of the story.)

Reports coming in from Stockholm at this hour describe a scene of complete horror as scores of gingerbread men are trapped in the wreckage of the collapsed buildings. Police have given up on using dogs to find the survivors, however, after finding out that the dogs adore gingerbread.

“Hello? I’d Like To Report A Robbery….

…..Someone stole a pound of my marijuana."

WICHITA, Kan. - A Wichita man called 911 to report he was the victim of an armed robbery. The theft? A pound of marijuana worth about $1,100 that he had been trying to sell at his home.

The victim told police Thursday that a buyer had pulled out a sawed-off shotgun and stole the drugs.

Police brought in a drug-sniffing dog to the house and located more marijuana and drug paraphernalia.

Don't you wish they'd release that particular tape? I'll bet he was indignant about being arrested, too. Well, I'm glad we finally got another criminal mastermind, it was beginning to look like the crooks had suddenly run out of geniuses. Guess not.

Oh Goody!

Dennis Kucinich is in the race for the 2008 Democratic nomination! This will at least provide comic relief through what is promising to be a very long, hard and damn near endless campaign season.

In a statement, Kucinich said he plans to formally announce his candidacy on Tuesday at Cleveland's City Hall, where he served as mayor of his hometown in the 1970s.

The liberal, anti-war Ohio congressman said he was inspired to run because he disagrees with the way some of his fellow Democrats are handling the war, including approval of a proposal to spend $160 billion more on the conflict.

I wasn't blogging during the 2004 cycle, so I never really got to play whack-a-mole with Kucinich.

UPDATE: Windy City needs oxygen, stat. Transterrestrial Musings is dusting off really, really old posts. Greg Tinti: Let the quivering begin!

Feel The Love

Jason Steck, writing over at The Moderate Voice delivers a blistering send-off for retiring UN hypocrite-in-chief, Kofi Annan.

Annan has never lacked for a kind word and a soft shoulder towards the world's most cruel dictators while holding the United States to a "special responsibility" that requires that the U.S. not only avoid pursuing its interests, but also asks that the U.S. actively undermine itself whenever convenient for the Secretary-General's office. At the same time he calls the United States to its supposed "special responsibility", however, Annan refused to uphold his own by repeatedly obstructing international cooperation in crises from Kosovo to Darfur.

Even when international cooperation has proven possible, Annan has undermined it. During the period of sanctions against Iraq from 1991-2003, the Secretary-General's office was empowered to manage the "Oil for Food" program designed to decrease the impact of the sanctions on Iraqi civilians while blocking Iraqi rearmament. Due to massive corruption within the program, however, Saddam Hussein diverted money away from feeding his people to build himself grand new palaces while U.N. bureaucrats including Annan's own son skimmed millions off for their personal enrichment. When the fraud was exposed, Annan personally blocked all meaningful moves for accountability.

If there was any real responsibility at the UN, Kofi Annan should have been turned out of office on his ear a long time ago. His continued tenure there for two terms is, I suspect, a direct result of his kissing up to some of the worst governments in the world. His relentless attempts to undermine anything America has tried to do in the decade of his control of the UN made him the darling of dictators everywhere.

At all stages of Annan's tenure, he has prized his own self-serving preening over any substantial contribution to the international debate over the shape of the post-Cold War world. Annan entered the Secretary-General's office at a time of unprecedented height in the stature of the United Nations, where the institution had been placed at the center of what the first President Bush called "a new world order". Annan leaves this institution far worse than he found it, sullied by his rhetorical inanity, his nepotism, and his self-centered aggrandizement. Good riddance to Annan and here's hoping for a new day at the United Nations.

I'm quite glad Annan is going away. It is about a decade late, however. In a way, though, Annan's behavior set back the cause of "internationalism" by about 20 years, so there is a degree of good that even this vain and foolish man accomplished.

Buying Silence?

Bob Owens has caught wind of something exceedingly strange. It seems there are a few, shall we say, interesting promotions of reporters involved in citing the apparently non-existent Iraqi police captain, Jamil Hussein.

In just eight months, Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein was cited as a source in stories by 17 named AP reporters, and also appeared in several stories where no byline was given. To the best we can determine, he has never been cited by another news organization, at any time.

Since his authenticity was thrown in doubt, the fabled Iraqi Police Captain has completely disappeared from AP reporting, except for the AP's denials that he is the fraud that the Iraqi interior ministry says he is. The captain, if he is real, would have likely come forward by now to clear his name. He has not.

At the current level of controversy, it might be prudent for these 17 Associated Press reporters, AP international editor John Daniszewski, and AP Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll to each go on the record and establish the details, dates and locations of their relationship with alleged Iraqi Police Captain Jamil Hussein that they have so vigorously defended.

Daniszewski and Carroll should also explain why, when there is so much suspicion that the Associated Press has been duped by a series of false witnesses tied to a flawed string-based news gathering methodology, that the AP promoted two of the reporters involved in this controversy.

Kim Gamel, who issued stories using Hussein as a source on June 1, June 5 and twice on June 6, has now been promoted to the newly-created position of Baghdad News Editor.

Patrick Quinn, who wrote a story using Hussein as a source on May 30, has been promoted to the newly-created position of Assistant Chief of Middle East News.

As Bob points out, there is something odd about suddenly promoting these two into jobs apparently created just for them. Why, a suspicious person might wonder if some silence was being bought here. At least until the AP satisfactorily explains the repeated use of a man who is not employed in the job the AP reports and who is not authorized to speak to the press, why are they suddenly giving out promotions into brand, spanking new jobs?

Big Wedding

A tourist resort in India decided to stage a mock wedding to entice tourists to visit. The hour long ceremony was capped with a fireworks display. The bride and groom were dressed in very fancy wedding outfits including gold headdresses. It was a really big wedding. Especially when you consider the fact that the bride and groom are elephants.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India (AFP) - Two captive elephants were dressed up as bride and groom for a mock-wedding ceremony to amuse guests at a beach resort in southern India, hotel staff said.

The "wedding" took place Sunday evening — billed as an auspicious night for Hindu marriages — at a resort in the coastal town of Kovalam, a popular tourist destination in Kerala state.

"It was altogether a different experience. I will remember it forever," said British guest Claire Abel from Liverpool on Monday.

But one activist questioned whether the captive elephants were being treated properly.

"Greedy owners exploit the captive elephants for making money and they don't feed them properly," said Renjith Devarajan of the Elephant Lovers Club.

The groom was a 12-year-old elephant called Raju, while his bride, two years younger, was called Rani.

Both wore embellished gold head-dresses for the hour-long ceremony, which was accompanied by temple music and followed by fireworks.

The organizers consider the event a big success because it drew around 180 foreign tourists. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard suggest that they simply are not thinking big enough. If they really want to gather a really large audience, they should stage a big divorce. The place will be overrun with hordes of lawyers almost instantly.

Camogators

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have spent a great deal of time and expended a great deal of energy trying to warn the world about the deadly Animal Uprising™. We've tried to expose the worst of the treacherous attempts at sneak attacks by the reptile legions. That's why you now know about alligators baiting traps with newspapers. That is why the whole world knows the danger of alligators disguised as doormats. Even the latest hideous trick of alligators gift wrapping themselves has been exposed by our fearless reporting. (And by the way, the word 'fear' in fearless is not pronounced 'sense'. We don't understand why people keep mispronouncing it.)

So now we bring you the latest warning in the continuing saga of camouflaged gators: they are disguising themselves as luggage.

Border Patrol spokesman Lloyd Easterling said agents detained a driver on Interstate 8 in Yuma, southwest of Phoenix, after drug sniffing dogs were alerted to the odour of narcotics in a car late on Thursday.

A brief search yielded a small quantity of marijuana and the agents asked the unnamed driver if he had anything else they should know about.

"He says 'there's an alligator in there,' and sure enough there was a four-foot alligator curled around in his suitcase," Easterling said in a telephone interview on Monday.

Easterling said Arizona state police subsequently arrested the driver on drug possession charges, while the reptile was handed over to the care of the Arizona Game and Fish Department.

The alligator, which appeared to be in good shape, had not been smuggled over the border from Mexico, but was being driven from California to Phoenix, Easterling said.

The U.S. Border Patrol has inspection stations on highways north of the 2,000-mile (3,200-km) border to search for undocumented immigrants and drugs smuggled north from Mexico.

This is very serious. Think of the havoc this is going to cause in airports this time of year. Hungry luggage devouring passengers. We strong recommend that our readers do what we do and beat any suspect luggage with a baseball bat before opening it. After a while, the neighbors pretend they don't see you, but at least you'll be safe.

Comments

The comments are going to have to remain off. The site is being attacked very, very hard again and none of the plugins are able to even slow it down at this point. The only thing that stops the site from crashing is to totally disable the comment page.

A Cautionary Tale

From Britain comes this story of an out-of-control bureaucracy and the murder of a small British cheese company. The Telegraph reports that bureaucrats from the European Union used every dirty trick they could muster to kill the company, Bowland Dairies and ban it from selling cheese.

John Wright had built up Bowland Dairies in Nelson into an £8-million-a-year business making curd cheese, mostly exported to five EU countries, including France and Germany, for use in quiches and flans. On June 12, inspectors of the European Commission's Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) visited the plant for 90 minutes, looked through the paperwork and, after misinterpreting one document, issued a "rapid alert notice" that its products were unsafe. The milk in the cheese, they claimed, broke EU rules on antibiotic residues.

On June 20, after thoroughly inspecting the plant, Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA) strongly disagreed. It recommended one or two minor changes in procedure, and allowed production to resume.

On July 4 the commission repeated its claim that the milk did not comply with EU rules. The FSA responded that the FVO inspectors seemed to be confused over the type of milk the firm used. Telling the European Standing Committee on the Food Chain that "no evidence was found that contaminated milk was used", the FSA issued a notice to all EU member states that Bowland's cheese was entirely safe and fit for market. The commission appended its own negative comments to this notice, effectively maintaining the ban.

The company won - handily - in court, but the bureaucrats simply kept up the pressure and eventually forced Britain itself to either ban the sale of cheese by the company or face an investigation of the nation's entire cheese industry. In layman's terms, this is called "extortion". In the EU, this is apparently business as usual. Read the whole thing and then ponder for a moment on the drive to enforce nanny state regulations in this country. Is this really what we want for our future?

“The Hannibal Lecter Of Mideast Diplomacy”

The New York Post's assessment of Jimmy Carter upon finding out that Carter's book tour is being filmed to produce a documentary by director Jonathan Demme, best known for The Silence of the Lambs. The Post joins the ranks of major media outlets that are attacking both Carter and Carter's pile of lies, distortions and fabrications that he published.

Stein says the Israel-bashing diatribe discusses several meetings at which he was present. Yet "my notes of those meetings show little similarity to points claimed in the book," he writes. Concludes Stein: "Being a former president does not give one a unique privilege to invent information."

Other respected scholars and political figures also are accusing Carter of distortions - and outright inventions.

Dennis Ross, who was President Bill Clinton's Mideast envoy, notes that Carter - parroting the Palestinian line - uses a map the ex-president claims demonstrates that Israel didn't really offer substantial and unprecedented concessions to Yasser Arafat at Camp David in 2000. (Arafat rejected the offer.)

But Ross says that map was never used at Camp David - he created it for his own 2004 book, "The Missing Peace." Carter not only plagiarized the map, but misrepresents it to create his own skewed version of the Camp David talks.

It begins to look like Carter wrote his dishonest book in the deliberate hope of provoking a heated reaction from supporters of Israel.

It would be easy to just ignore Carter, who for years secretly served as a closed-door political and public-relations adviser to Arafat. But this book is getting an avalanche of attention: Carter has been given fawning interviews on all of the major talk and morning news shows - all to softball questions that don't challenge the myriad lies in this book.

Indeed, Carter's book tour is being filmed for a documentary by director Jonathan Demme, best known for "Silence of the Lambs." (Jimmy Carter as the Hannibal Lecter of Mideast diplomacy? Makes sense to us.)

As the Post editorial points out, the Democrats decided to politically rehabilitate this failed president. Now they are having to beat feet away from him as quickly as possible when they found out about this book. Carter was rightly considered a political failure for many years. It is only recently that he was brought back into prominence instead of being a secret weasel for Yasser Arafat. The Democrats will have to relearn the lesson of why he was kept at arm's length for so long. They already are to some extent.

Democrat’s Dilemma

What in the world is the party going to do about William Jefferson? Even the Washington Post is puzzled by all this, it seems. Confounding all the predictions, Jefferson won reelection despite all that cold, hard - in fact frozen - cash he kept in his freezer. Now the party that swore it was going to run a clean Congress is in a real bind.

Voters gave the Louisiana Democrat an emphatic reelection victory over state Rep. Karen Carter, even though his campaign had been weighted with revelations that federal authorities had videotaped him taking $100,000 in alleged bribe money, and that $90,000 of it had been found inside a freezer in his apartment in the District. The investigation led House colleagues to dump him from a key committee, donors abandoned him and the state Democratic Party switched its allegiance to his opponent.

But before cheering supporters at a hotel room on election night, Jefferson called his win "a great moment" and said, "I thank almighty God for making it possible."

He declined to discuss the probe.

Divinely inspired or not, his victory now poses a quandary for Democrats, some of whom have shunned him politically, and possibly also for the city. Leaders here seek to project an image of civic probity as they lobby for more federal money for recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

"This has to be seen as troubling," said Brian Brox, a political science professor at Tulane University. "I don't think his victory does any good for New Orleans as it presses its claims on the national government."

This is going to be a major headache for Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the party. Since two of Jefferson's associates have already been convicted, it is hard to see how he will avoid being indicted. As I have said before, people will look at this and see that, despite all the promises, business will go on in the same old way with the Democrats in charge. That will hurt them in the long run.

“Hey, Cupcake! You’re Outta Here!”

The new cry of the nannies, apparently. If you think the ban by New York City on trans fats was the only thing happening in the food wars, you're wrong. There are bans going into place in schools on the humble cupcake. It's got a lot of people upset, too.

Once a cupcake wasn't something to think about. It was just what your mom brought to school for your birthday. But this year, as schools across the country begin enforcing new federally mandated "wellness policies," many are banning the little treats. And parents are fighting back.

When the principal at George Mason Elementary School in Alexandria explained to the PTA earlier this year that cupcakes were out, a furor erupted.

"A lot of people are really angry," said Karen Epperson, a George Mason parent. "They think this is really stupid."

Mind you, Epperson said, it's not the kids who are upset. Kids are not the ones who are so devoted to cupcakes.

At the same time they're being booted from classrooms, cupcakes have become the latest hipster chic food. Entire blogs are dedicated to cupcake culture. Expensive Johnny Cupcakes "Make Cupcakes Not War" T-shirts are in demand. Cupcakes were raved about on "Sex in the City" and rapped about on "Saturday Night Live."

Just last week, the bakery, coffee shop and dessert lounge Buzz, decorated with flattened cupcake liners, opened in Alexandria, joining a growing number of high-end cupcake-specialty bakeries from Magnolia in New York to Citizen Cupcake in San Francisco.

But the bans in schools are part of the emerging nanny-statism assault on "unhealthy" eating. Which the nannies will be cheerfully waging for the foreseeable future. The Post article says that it is just the aging boomers who have fond memories of cupcakes that are fighting against these bans. But it's all for the best of intentions, the nannies respond.

Every day, we're told: More children are dangerously overweight. More children are diabetic. More children have life-threatening allergies to everything from peanuts to wheat to milk. More children sit around watching TV and playing video games. And, as many schools know, every classroom is divided between the cupcake-haves, the ones whose mothers dutifully lug in trays of them, and the cupcake-have-nots, whose mothers can't afford to or don't know that it's expected.

It's all about fairness. Good Lord. The right to make your own decisions is being nibbled away. One cupcake at a time.

Kofi’s Plan

Kofi Annan, soon to be retired from the post of Secretary General of the United Nations, offers America a parting message. What it boils down to is quite simple: give in to the world government scheme and everything will be just peachy.

First, in today's world we are all responsible for each other's security. Against such threats as nuclear proliferation, climate change, global pandemics or terrorists operating from safe havens in failed states, no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others…..

Second, we are also responsible for each other's welfare. Without a measure of solidarity, no society can be truly stable…..

Third, both security and prosperity depend on respect for human rights and the rule of law…..

My fourth lesson, therefore, is that governments must be accountable for their actions, in the international as well as the domestic arena…..

How can states hold each other to account? Only through multilateral institutions. So my final lesson is that those institutions must be organized in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong.

Developing countries should have a stronger voice in international financial institutions, whose decisions can mean life or death for their people. New permanent or long-term members should be added to the U.N. Security Council, whose current membership reflects the reality of 1945, not of today.

No less important, all the Security Council's members must accept the responsibility that comes with their privilege. The council is not a stage for acting out national interests. It is the management committee of our fledgling global security system.

Each of the above are only excerpts. You really need to read the whole thing to get the full aroma. This man, who was in charge of the UN while billions were skimmed in the oil for food scandal lectures on the need for respect for the rule of law. This man who was in charge of UN peacekeepers when genocide was committed in Rwanda lectures on being responsible for the security of other nations. Step back and read it again, if you can stomach it. Because the real message here is that America must let the UN decide for us what is best for us.