Three Little Words

For my son: BUY ME ONE.

That is all.

Bedfellows

Courtesy of AllahPundit at Hot Air, comes this video of David Duke interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN.

At one point, in fact, he actually starts to say “Jewish” before catching himself and switching to the more palatable progressive adjective. Nor will his criticisms of the war sound unfamiliar, except perhaps for the flourish about the “Jewish wedding.

Allah nails this, but I'd also point out that this is not unfamiliar from some other sources. And the two strains of rhetoric are coming closer and closer together. That should bother people. A lot.

UPDATE: Why John Bolton will be missed in the UN. Turnabout is fair play. Bolton is backing an initiative to have Mad Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged formally with inciting genocide. Since the poorly washed president of Iran actually has called for genocide, in the real world this would be open and shut. In Bizzaroland, the UN, this has as much chances of passing as a repeal of the law of gravity. No wait, substantially less than that.

UPDATE: Midtopia, right after my own heart: Let the Dukes of the world keep right on talking. It will burn them in the end. Ace: Noted Academic. Right.

“I Miss When They Were All Little.”

The Anchoress on banana-munching dogs and why men and women don't understand one another.

A Word Of Explanation

Things have been a little bit less than normal around the Crabitat for several days. Longtime readers will realize that. New visitors will not. By way of explaining what is happening here, this website has been under a pretty hefty attack since about the time voting started for the Weblog Awards. I have absolutely no idea if the timing is coincidental or not. But Blue Crab Boulevard has been knocked offline repeatedly by waves of spam attacks that are defeating every WordPress Plugin. The only reason this site is still on line is by sheer luck and a tech who saved it.

The attacks are coming in massed waves, so you may have noticed occasional slow loads if you happened to visit when one was going on. (There was a particularly rough one this afternoon sometime after noon.) I have been blocking IPs like mad when the attacks come in. I apologize to long term readers and to the small community of regular commenters for all this. I wish I could turn the comments back on, but until this is resolved, I can't risk it. And I apologize that the Crabitat has been a little different than normal as well.

UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Jawa Report. The site went down again for a short time today when it got really bad, but so far I've mostly been able to stay online through this. It is by sheer luck, not skill.

A Murder Of Crows

It seems that the city of Cedar Rapids, Iowa has had a problem with crows for a number of years. The feathered vandals, have been messing things up, quite literally, in downtown's Greene Square Park. But a few years back, a very smart city city veterinarian listened to a local hunter.

It seems that a murder of crows doesn't like to see murdered crows.

During winter months, crows congregate at Greene Square Park as it gleans warmth from nearby city buildings and asphalt. They eventually move on but leave plenty of droppings behind.

The crow coffin was born in 1991, when former city veterinarian Russell Anthony heard from a hunter that crows avoided a tree with a dead crow. He wired two dead crows — one face up and one face down — on a board to be placed high up in trees.

At Greene Square Park, city crews put the dead birds in place this week. The hordes of living crows have since vanished, Parks Director Dave Kramer said.

The coffins were on hiatus the last four years, after former parks commissioner Wade Wagner discontinued the practice during his tenure. Last January, however, Kramer brought back the practice, and today the city has 13 boards in place.

A new weapon against the Animal Uprising™! If it works with pigeons, we're golden!

When Potatoes Are Outlawed

Only outlaws will have potatoes. A woman in Liberty, Ohio assaulted a grocery store manager with a sack of potatoes after an argument over having to wait in line.

Scott Renzenbrink, 45, told police a clerk having problems with a customer called him to the register. The customer told him she was upset about the wait and struck the manager in the back of head with the potatoes when he was walking away after the conversation, according to police.

A witness followed the woman out to the parking lot and took down her license plate number.

Calls for an assault potato ban are expected momentarily.

Senator Tim Johnson Suffers Possible Stroke

MSNBC is reporting that South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson appears to have suffered a stroke and has been rushed to a hospital. Please keep him and his family in your thoughts and prayers. Stroke can be a terrible thing or not so bad, let's hope that it is minor and his recovery is quick.

The End Of The World As We Know It

And you will NOT feel fine. The Animal Uprising™ has unveiled its newest terror tactic. This one will be almost unstoppable and may well put them over the top. By being under the bottom, so to speak. Just remember, the next time you go to use the toilet, check for snakes.

Peter Phillips, a wildlife officer for the Northern Territory's Parks and Wildlife Service, was called to remove the snake after a plumber who was fixing the blocked toilet discovered it curled in the pipes.

"The … resident originally called a plumber because her toilet was blocked," Phillips said in a statement released by the Northern Territory government. "I arrived to see a large python head peering out of the toilet bowl."

Phillips removed the snake from the septic tank because he said it had grown too big to be pulled straight out of the toilet. The mostly nocturnal Carpet Python had probably taken up temporary residence in the septic tank because it was a good place to hide during the day and hunt for frogs.

Australian septic tanks are good places to hunt for frogs? Who knew?

Disgraceful Behavior

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson took it upon himself to disregard State Department advice and go glad handing with Bashar Assad. He even posed for a nice photo with the chinless wonder.

Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees, met with Assad after the State Department said that it disapproved of his trip. The United States has limited diplomatic ties with Syria because of its support of Hezbollah and Hamas, which the U.S. deems terrorist organizations, and President Bush has expressed reluctance to seek help from Damascus on Iraq until the Syrians curb that support and reduce their influence in Lebanon.

"Assad clearly indicated the willingness to cooperate with the Americans and or the Iraqi army to be part of a solution" in Iraq, Nelson told reporters in a conference call following the meeting. The U.S. says foreign fighters often enter Iraq across that boundary.

Nelson (and soon Dodd and Kerry) all know that this is out of line. Whether they agree with the president or not, they undermine US foreign policy at the risk of the US itself. The impact of actions like these in a time of war are all negative. And the impacts are against the entire nation, not just the president. This is a lousy trend.

Geminid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight

The annual Geminid meteor shower, regarded as the best one of all the annual showers, will peak tonight starting at around 9 PM.

The annual Geminid meteor shower is expected to produce a reliable shooting star show that will get going Sunday and peak the middle of next week.

The Geminid event is known for producing one or two meteors every minute during the peak for viewers with dark skies willing to brave chilly nights.

If the Geminid Meteor Shower occurred during a warmer month, it would be as familiar to most people as the famous August Perseids. Indeed, a night all snuggled-up in a sleeping bag under the stars is an attractive proposition in summer. But it's hard to imagine anything more bone chilling than lying on the ground in mid-December for several hours at night. 

But if you are willing to bundle up, late next Wednesday night into early Thursday morning will be when the Geminids are predicted to be at their peak. 

Most satisfying shower

The Geminids are a very fine winter shower, and usually the most satisfying of all the annual showers, even surpassing the Perseids. Studies of past displays show that this shower has a reputation for being rich both in slow, bright, graceful meteors and fireballs as well as faint meteors, with relatively fewer objects of medium brightness.  Many appear yellowish in hue. Some even appear to form jagged or divided paths.   

A sky map can be found here.  If you can find Orion, Gemini appears to the upper left of that constellation.

Very Interesting Timing

AFP is reporting that the US Coast Guard just happens to have an exercise going on in the Florida Straits right now. The exercise is being explained as preparing for an influx of refugees from "any Caribbean nation". Uh, sure.

Peering at a map of the region Tuesday ahead of an exercise, with the current positions of a dozen ships marked off by flags, Coast Guard Rear Admiral David Kunkel said they had a clear mission: to stop the exodus.

"We don't want to be caught off guard," said Kunkel, who was leading the exercise on responding to a mass migration from what the guard insists could be "any Caribbean nation" to the southeastern state of Florida.

But the timing is no coincidence.

Castro, who has led the only communist country in the Americas for more than four decades, has been out of sight for months after intestinal surgery, and expectations are rising that the 80 year old leader might soon pass from power.

The country of more then 11 million is a short hop away by speedboat; smugglers usually charge up to 10,000 dollars a person to transport migrants from Cuba.

One has to wonder if they heard something. It would be interesting to know exactly when this exercise was decided on and if these are the original dates.

Les Sous-Vêtements Dans Un Noeud

That's what the translation programs on the web return for a phrase that describes perfectly the condition that French hedgehog aficionados are in today. It seems a French hunting almanac had a recipe they took great exception to: hedgehog stew.

The recipe appears in the Almanach du Chasseur (The Hunter's Almanach), published by a company called CPE in Romorantin, central France.

France's national hedgehog sanctuary sounded the alarm, pointing out that hedgehogs are protected species.

Killing them for the pot carries a potential penalty of 9,000 euros (11,700 dollars) and a six-month jail term.

Two groups for the protection of wild animals, Aspas and One Voice, said they had filed suit, demanding that CPE withdraw the book.

Now they are being kind of silly here. Everyone knows hedgehogs are only properly used as croquet balls. Perhaps the should be careful about starting a row over the hedgehogs, though.

The players all played at once without waiting for turns, quarrelling all the while, and fighting for the hedgehogs; and in a very short time the Queen was in a furious passion, and went stamping about, and shouting `Off with his head!' or `Off with her head!' about once in a minute.

Hedgehogs. What a thing to get your underwear in a knot over.

If This Report Is True

Then nations in the Middle East like the Saudis had better start being part of the solution right now. The New York Times reports that Saudi Arabia has warned the US that is will fund Iraqi Sunnis if the US pulls out.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 12 — Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq’s Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Mr. Cheney’s whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Bush administration officials said.

The Saudi warning reflects fears among America’s Sunni Arab allies about Iran’s rising influence in Iraq, coupled with Tehran’s nuclear ambitions. King Abdullah II of Jordan has also expressed concern about rising Shiite influence, and about the prospect that the Shiite-dominated government would use Iraqi troops against the Sunni population.

A senior Bush administration official said Tuesday that part of the administration’s review of Iraq policy involved the question of how to harness a coalition of moderate Iraqi Sunnis with centrist Shiites to back the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

The Saudis have argued strenuously against an American pullout from Iraq, citing fears that Iraq’s minority Sunni Arab population would be massacred. Those fears, United States officials said, have become more pronounced as a growing chorus in Washington has advocated a draw-down of American troops in Iraq, coupled with diplomatic outreach to Iran, which is largely Shiite.

This appears to be kind of a "duh" moment for the Saudis. I have been arguing all along that it is in the best interest of the other nations in the Middle East to help stabilize Iraq or risk an expanding new Persian Empire. Too bad it has taken them this long. But they really had better think this through and start helping the US rather than hindering, or worse, facilitating the violence.

Not Surprising, Really

But we here at Blue Crab Boulevard have caught Reuters in an egregious fabrication of the news. If you read this report, you'll learn that workers at the Istanbul Airport "sacrificed" a camel. This was, according to Reuters, a celebration for having finished some work ahead of schedule.

The national flag-carrier said on Wednesday maintenance staff killed the camel at Turkey's busiest airport after sending a batch of aircraft back to the supplier ahead of schedule.

Turkish Airlines has suspended the head of plane maintenance pending an investigation, the company said in a statement.

Turkish newspapers carried pictures of the camel, two rugs thrown over his hump, ahead of Tuesday's sacrifice. They also showed pictures of the beast chopped up into chunks of meat.

Top-selling daily Hurriyet said 700 kilos of camel meat were distributed among the workers. Turkish Airlines was accepted last week into the Lufthansa-led Star Alliance.

Of course, they got it all wrong. In point of fact, our usually inebriated sources tell us that the truth is completely different. It seems that the maintenance staff actually was acting in self defense. The camel was really an agent of the Animal Uprising™ and was caught in the act of trying to hijack one of the planes. When cornered, the camel began a lethal barrage of camel spit and the workers had no choice but to whack the creature. Divvying up the carcass afterward was just a bonus for a job well done!

UPDATE: Now here's an even bigger surprise: the BBC got it even more wrong. They not only reported the same misinformation in the Reuters story, but compounded it with the headline: Turkish Airlines gets the hump. Actually, Kerim got the hump.

Terra Nova

Here's an interesting bit of history, related to my earlier post about the new digs for the scientists at Amundsen-Scott base at the South Pole. It seems that the base that explorer Robert Falcon Scott set off from on his ill-fated trip to the pole is still intact and is kept almost as a shrine to the doomed explorer. Both Scott and Ernest Shackleton (who's adventure did not work out well, either) used the building known as Terra Nova on McMurdo Sound.

The hut is much as Scott left it having been restored in 1960. Some of the food there is believed to still be edible nearly a century after the departure of the explorers. The building's interior looks like the owners just stepped out for a moment and plan to return momentarily. The world's coldest museum. (Some excellent high resolution photographs at the link).