*GASP*

The Keepers Of The Doomsday Clock® plan a major, major, really huge announcement to move the hands of the much-loved-by-the -media clock hands forward to 32.75399125 nanoseconds to midnight. Or thereabouts.

Oh, and incidentally launch their new website. Here is a screenshot in case you click that link after the website launch publicity stunt grim announcement.

The hint of the "major announcement" is in the story planted in the media, of course.

The group did not say in which direction the hands would move. But in a news release previewing an event next Wednesday, they said the change was based on "worsening nuclear, climate threats" to the world.

You can draw your own conclusions about what you think the ginormous grim announcement will be. Want to bet a fiver that it has to do with the new focus on global warming? Not that we're cynical about this kind of media manipulation around here or anything.

Human Shields

Michael Totten has another report from his visit to Southern Lebanon. This time he visits a Christian village that was used by as cover by Hezbollah during the war. He reports that when the villagers wanted to leave, Hezbollah fired on the civilians to force them to stay as human shields.

He told me that 18 days after the start of the war a large group of civilians decided it was time to leave Ain Ebel and flee to the north. They were no longer willing to stay while Israel fired back at Hezbollah’s rocket launchers. It was too dangerous, and Hezbollah insisted on staying and endangering those who lived there.

So they fled the area in a convoy of civilian vehicles. It was safer, they figured, to travel in a group than alone.

On their way out of the village, Hezbollah fighters stood on the side of the road and opened fire with machine guns on the fleeing civilians.

I was shocked, and I asked Alan to confirm this. Was it really true? Hezbollah opened fire on Lebanese civilians with machine guns? Alan confirmed this was true.

"Why?" I had an idea, but I wanted a local person to say it.

Because, Alan said, Hezbollah wanted to use the civilians of Ain Ebel as “human shields.” I did not use the phrase “human shields.” These were Alan’s own words.

Fortunately, Hezbollah didn’t kill anybody when they opened fire. One person was shot in the hand, and another was shot in the shoulder. This was enough, though, to do the job. The civilians turned around and went back to the village under Israeli bombardment.

That is, of course, only a very, very small part of the report. There is a lot more, including photographs. There is even a bit to laugh about in the encounter with French troops from the UN "peacekeepers". The reality on the ground in Lebanon both before, during and after the war is not at all what the media portrayed. The more I read what Totten is reporting, the more convinced I am that Israel tried very hard to fight the war clean. It was Hezbollah that turned it ugly. And the media reported Hezbollah's side of the story almost exclusively.

Mount Soledad - Finally Resolved?

Jay at Stop The ACLU has the details of what may be the final round in the insanity over the Mount Soledad war memorial. This decades old battle over the cross on Mount Soledad in San Diego has been a complete waste of time, money and effort for a ridiculous reason.

From the 9th Circuit: Opinion

1. The appeal by the City of the district court’s May 3, 2006 order (the one that said the city must rip down the cross by Aug. 1, 2006 or face a $5,000/day fine) to enforce a December 3, 1991 injunction under California constitutional authority is dismissed as moot.

2. The appeal of the district court’s denial of intervention, filed by the San Diegans for the Mt. Soledad National War Memorial, is also dismissed as moot.

3. The case is remanded to the district court with instructions to vacate the May 3, 2006 order to enforce the 1991 injunction.

4. The case is remanded to the district court to determine whether, and to what extent, counsel for plaintiff-appellee may be entitled to attorneys’ fees.

The question I have is why the ACLU has fought this ridiculous battle for two decades. Is there really a noble principle they are reaching for or is this just plain old hostility? Easy answer.

Enough already, ACLU. Drop the damn thing. Frankly, at this point, I rather hope costs are assessed on the folks who have pressed this idiocy, Paulson and his buddies at the ACLU. Earlier posts here, here and here.

Before There Was An Animal Uprising™……

™……..There was Dixie Chicken! Paul Barrere and Fred Tackett from Little Feat, performing it live in 2003. (Massive file warning. Best to start the video and then pause it to let it load before resuming. It's worth the wait. Can you say, "Tasty?" I knew that you could.) ™

Yes that guitar player sure could play.

Nifong Asks To Be Removed

Durham, North Carolina District persecutor Mike Nifong has asked the state's Attorney General to take over the dropping of all charges in the Duke lacrosse rape charges. It isn't exactly phrased that way, but that will be the upshot.

A source close to the investigation said Nifong sent a letter to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper asking his office to assume responsibility of the case. Calls to the Attorney General's office and Mike Nifong's office were not yet returned.

Three Duke Lacrosse players, Reade Seligmann, Collin Finnerty, and David Evans were indicted in 2006 on charges of rape, sexual assault, and kidnapping.

We heartily second the motion and also ask the North Carolina Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to look into official misconduct on the part of Mike Nifong. The best part, Nifong won't even have to be nifonged! It will be legitimate!

UPDATE: Lots and lots of good posts out there on this item: The Jawa Report, Durham-in-Wonderland, A Blog For All, Ace of Spades HQ, Outside The Beltway, Don Surber, LieStoppers, Gateway Pundit, Protein Wisdom, LaShawn Barber, Hot Air, Done With Mirrors,

Canadian Cruelty

The Canadian government's harsh treatment of an illegal immigrant from the United States is a matter of more than a little concern. The arrogant Canadian government has subjected the immigrant to confinement ever since he was captured trying to get off a truck in Mississauga, Ontario. The conditions they are keeping him in are positively inhuman*. They won't consider releasing the captive and giving him a green card, either. And now they won't even pay for the deportation, they are asking for someone to volunteer to drive the captive back to California! This just stinks.

Of course, so does the immigrant.

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canadian wildlife officials are looking for a brave driver prepared for a 3,500-kilometre (2,200 mile) trip to take a stinky stowaway skunk back to her home in California.

But the skunk, who survived a seven-day journey across the United States and into Canada without food and water, after being accidentally locked away in a transport lorry, is having a hard time finding someone to give her a ride home.

"We can never give a no-spray guarantee, of course," said Nathalie Karvonen, executive director at the Toronto Wildlife Centre, which has been caring for the skunk since January 5, referring to the black-and-white striped animal's foul-smelling defence mechanism.

"It would have be somebody who would be prepared for that possibility."

Releasing her into the wild in Canada is out of the question, Karvonen said.

"It's totally and utterly illegal from a provincial and federal standpoint to release a California skunk in Ontario."

As well, "skunks are very territorial animals … "They won't just readily accept a stranger in their territory, so there will be a big skunk fight."

Lady, you haven't seen a big skunk fight, yet. Just wait until the AUCLU gets into this and hauls you into court. (That's Animal Uprising™ Civil Liberties Union, not those lightweight humans). Let's put it this way, when they badger a witness in court, they use real badgers. Enough said.

* Well of course the conditions are inhuman. It's a skunk, for heaven's sake.

Reid Folds

This is very, very funny. The Republican backed amendment to the ethics reform bill in the Senate appears to have been accepted. Harry Reid got smoked on this one.

With this CQ article ($), it seems like this is official. What's thoroughly surprising is that the new DeMint Amendment is even stronger than the original one. Excerpt:

After losing a critical floor vote Thursday and scrambling in vain to reverse the decision, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., found the spirit of bipartisan compromise more to his liking Friday morning.

Reid offered an olive branch to Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., agreeing to embrace his amendment to a pending ethics and lobbying overhaul (S 1) with some modifications. DeMint’s amendment, which Democratic leaders tried but failed to kill on Thursday, would expand the definition of member earmarks that would be subject to new disclosure rules.

[...] Reid admitted Friday that he was caught off guard when nine Democrats and independent Joseph I. Lieberman voted against his motion to table, or kill, the DeMint amendment. His effort failed, 46-51.

[...] Friday morning, a chastened Reid said, “Yesterday was a rather difficult day, as some days are. We tend to get in a hurry around here sometimes when we shouldn’t be. Personally, for the majority, we probably could have done a little better job.”

Translation: "Jim DeMint sucker punched us and we look really, really bad right now. The Republicans offered meaningful reform and the Senate Democratic leadership tried to stop it. And fumbled that, too." DeMint is not my Senator and I really have not followed his career, but he just pulled off a major win here. This was a very, very slick move politically.

World Gone Mad

Or at least part of it. In Britain, two brothers were taken to court, found guilty and given three year conditional discharges for "causing unnecessary suffering to an animal." Their crime?

Feeding their dog.

David and Derek Benton, from Fordham near Cambridge, were given a three-year conditional discharge after being convicted of allowing their 10-year-old pet "Rusty" to get so obese he weighed twice as much as he should.

Vets working for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) which brought the prosecution said the brown-coloured dog was so fat he was unable to walk more than six paces without having to sit down.

"An independent vet said that this dog was so obese that it was effectively crippled," said RSPCA superintendent Tim Wass.

The dog has lost weight and has been returned to the brothers. David Benton is not repentant at all:

"The RSPCA have gone overboard on this," an unrepentant David Benton told BBC television. "Rusty was overweight, we're not denying that. But he was loved, you'll never get another dog like him."

The reality that is Britain today. Unbelievable.

Imperious Pelosi Rankles Rangel

The New York Post reports some trouble in paradise just one week into the new Congress. It seems Charlie Rangel is not at all happy with some of Nancy Pelosi's decisions lately and is more than willing to buck her publicly.

 Powerhouse New York Rep. Charles Rangel is butting heads with fellow Democrat Nancy Pelosi just a week into the new Congress controlled by their party, The Post has learned.

Rangel yesterday swatted down a tax hike that Pelosi has floated, and he made an end run around her decision to bypass House committees in a rush to bring bills to a vote.

"There's a lot of tension there," one Democratic lawmaker said of the relationship between Rangel and Pelosi.

Rangel, who took over the powerful Ways and Means Committee after 36 years in Congress, smacked down the idea Pelosi raised on Sunday of repealing tax cuts for those earning more than $500,000 per year.

"We haven't gotten that far to be talking about tax increases," Rangel told The Post. "She hasn't discussed it with me . . . We haven't gotten into tax policy."

There's more. It does not look at all like the storied discipline Pelosi supposedly wielded before the elections, does it? What it looks like is the seniority system taking precedent over party discipline. Pelosi frankly made a huge mistake by trying to get John Murtha elected over Hoyer. That public loss appears to have come back to haunt her in record time. Want to bet Rahm Emanuel is already warming up in the bullpen?

North Koreans And Giant Rabbits

Representatives of the government of North Korea have purchased a number of German Gray Giant rabbits from a German rabbit breeder. This is the the same man who we have posted about before, so longtime readers know all about this man and his rodents of unusual size.

German pensioner Karl Szmolinsky was contacted by the North Korean embassy in Berlin after attracting attention for breeding his country's largest rabbit – Robert, a dog-sized beast weighing 23lb.

Officials visited Mr Szmolinsky, of Eberswalde, to see how big his Germany Gray Giants, which he normally sells to other breeders, really were. Suitably impressed, he was offered a supply contract on the spot. Eight females and four males bought for about £60 each and were shipped to North Korea a few weeks later.

"They want to boost meat production," Mr Szmolinsky was reported as saying. "They've arranged for me to go to Pyongyang in April to advise them on setting up a breeding farm."

Mr Szmolinsky, who breeds an annual nest of up to 80 of the animals, said he wasn't sure how many more they would want afterwards.

One of the Gray Giants yields up to 15lb of meat, enough to feed a large family. However, it is yet to seen how poor North Korea, which suffers from acute shortages of grain and other staples, will be able to feed them. The animals are voracious eaters.

The report does not say how well Kim Jong Il took the news that some of his officials were importing rabbits that were larger than the Dear Leader himself or what those official's last words were. Of course, by now we here at Blue Crab Boulevard are tired of hearing all about how big Mr. Szmolinsky's bunnies are. So we went in search of the real giant rabbits. The Great Western Giant Bunnies (Bunnicus Harveyus) live in California, of course. ALL the strangest things (and people) do. 

(Lovely Point Loma Lighthouse photo from PDPhoto.org.)

Lessons From New York City

Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich (what's up with that combination?) have an op-ed in today's Opinion Journal. Just as Giuliani managed to turn around an ailing city by addressing fundamental quality of life issues, they recommend addressing the core aspects of civil society to stabilize Iraq.

The American mission in Iraq must succeed. Our goal–promoting a stable, accountable democracy in the heart of the Middle East–cannot be achieved by purely military means.

Iraqis need to establish a civil society. Without the support of mediating civic and social associations–the informal ties that bind us together–no government can long remain stable, and no cohesive nation can be maintained. To establish a civil society, Iraqis must rebuild their basic infrastructure. Iraqis must take control of their destiny by rebuilding houses, stores, schools, roads, highways, mosques and churches.

But the constant threat of violence, combined with a high unemployment rate estimated between 30% and 50%, fundamentally undermines that effort. This not only sustains the fertile breeding ground for terrorist recruiters but has the same corrosive effect as it would in any city–raising the likelihood of further violence, civic decay and a crippling sense of powerlessness.

A massive effort must be made to engage in a well organized plan to rebuild Iraq. The goal: an infrastructure to support and encourage a strong, stable civil society.

When Giuliani took the reins in New York City, there was a lot of doubt that he could actually fix things there as I recall. But he did so. This whole op-ed is worth reading. There are some things that can be done rapidly that will help get more Iraqis working. Things like this need to occur just as much as fighting a counterinsurgency. A great deal has been done already with little public notice, of course. Our media does not report a lot of those activities. But Giuliani and Gingrich are recommending getting the Iraqis themselves into the efforts and getting the idle unemployed working to improve the infrastructure. They also recommend that the efforts be under US military control.

Fundamental Redesign

Daniel Henninger's Wonder Land column in the Opinion Journal is one of my weekly must reads. So it is this week as well. Henninger digs  beyond the soundbites and naysayers to the plan to help stabilize Iraq. He points out that this is really a fundamental redesign of tactics produced from within the armed forces and incorporating the lessons already learned in Iraq. If the military has always followed the pattern of fighting the last war it was in, this is an attempt to do that earlier than usual.

The U.S.'s primary problem in Iraq, manifest across 2006, has been an urban insurgency in a 30-mile radius around Baghdad and in Anbar province. The Petraeus command is the overdue beginning of the counterinsurgency.

This isn't a one-off effort as at Fallujah, but counterinsurgency as daily U.S. military policy. It is the product of an enormous amount of self-criticism and analysis done by military and civilian analysts in and out of government. It does not mean, as often suggested the past 24 hours, that 20,000 U.S. troops are now going to run out and look for gun battles with insurgents in back alleys.

In broadest outline, the plan divides Baghdad into nine districts, essentially neighborhoods. The job of providing daily security in each district will be undertaken by an Iraqi army brigade of several thousand soldiers, a U.S. support battalion of up to 1,000 troops, and most importantly, about 20 U.S. military "embeds" or advisers.

Some of us predicted late last year that advisory embeds would be part of the new Bush strategy on reading National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley's November memo of advice to the president in the New York Times. After a late November trip to Iraq, Mr. Hadley said four times in the memo that the U.S. should embed coalition forces with Iraq's army and dysfunctional police.

The source of this idea, in part, was a successful Marine experiment in Anbar province. Rather than attach just a single U.S. military adviser to an Iraqi commander at the division level, the Marines put advisers alongside Iraqi units down to the NCO level. They stayed with and fought with their Iraqi counterparts 24/7. And the Marines reported that the Iraqis fought with more confidence and effect, a k a spine-stiffening.

Read the whole thing. The man tasked with fighting this counterinsurgency is Gen. David Petraeus. He also happens to be the man who oversaw the drafting of the new counterinsurgency manual the military has just adopted. If the armed forces reinvent their tactics now rather than after the war, isn't that the way it should be? Henninger does not know that this effort will pan out, neither does anyone know it will not. But the cost of failure in Iraq is more than this nation - or the Iraqis themselves - can bear.

Once Upon A Time - Part Two

We really never thought there would be a competition for the Double Reverse Hansel and Gretel Memorial Criminal Mastermind Award®. But then, we forgot the one basic rule of the universe: never underestimate the power of human stupidity. A man attempting to escape from the police found a convenient hiding place. It just wasn't a good hiding place.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. - Brian Valentino sure picked the wrong hiding place to elude police. The 33-year-old burglary suspect was being transported yesterday to the Onondaga County jail in Syracuse when he kicked out a back window of the police car and dove headfirst through the opening.

Still handcuffed, Valentino ran a short distance and ducked into a building, where he ran down a hallway and hid behind a door.

There was one problem. His hiding spot was inside the headquarters of the county sheriff's office.

Leaving a trail of snow across the lobby, Valentino was easily followed and held by a retired deputy. Oh, sure, no cake crumbs were involved, but I think this has to qualify as a serious contender. It looks like the game is on!

Prussian Porkers Prevail

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are sorry to have to report that part of yet another country appears ready to fall to the minions of the Animal Uprising™. This time it is the German state of Lower Saxony. The profusion of porcine Prussian plunderers there now has the pig population outnumbering people. Pity the poor Saxons.

BERLIN - For the first time in 20 years, pigs outnumber people in the state of Lower Saxony, the pig capital of pork-loving Germany. The state farmers' association said Thursday that, as of the end of 2006, the number of swine hit 8.02 million, as good prices led to increased herd numbers.

At the same time, the state's population fell to 7.996 million, after peaking over the 8 million mark in 2004.

Who can blame people for fleeing in terror. How long can it be before the pigs turn the table on the hitherto sausage-loving Germans? How long until the people are going into the sausages instead of the other way around? Consider it a wurst case scenario.

Missing The Real Story

Whether through indifference, cluelessness or as part of a deliberate attempt to suppress the real truth, the media continues to ignore the reality of the Animal Uprising™. So stories like this one from Florida that keep turning up in the news blaming the human victim are common.

Franklyn Pigott Jr. set his home ablaze Wednesday while attempting to destroy a nest of bees that had formed outside the home, the Fort Myers News-Press reported Thursday.

When Pigott, 38, mixed a product called Real Kill Indoor Fogger with WD-40, it became a "flame-thrower" and melted the home's vinyl siding, according to a police incident report.

The story ignores the most important facts in the case. It's a good thing that Blue Crab Boulevard is around to decipher these media reports and publicize the truth. The fact of the matter is that the bees were not, in fact, harmed by the concoction because the bees have been fireproofed by the animal overlords. But more importantly, the idea to make the flamethrower did not originate with Pigott.

The bees themselves slipped the plans for the device under the man's door. They tried to get the man to burn his own house down. Aren't you glad we're here to help get to the bottom of these events?