Used Car For Sale: Only Four Owners

Which isn't bad, considering the car was built in 1903. Actually, the car sold today at auction to a collector. The oldest Ford automobile in existence. One of the first three model A Fords to ever be sold (the other two are long gone now).

Following a flurry of bidding at a Phoenix resort, well-known Houston lawyer John O'Quinn took home the brick-red, black-upholstered car that was one of the first three sold by newly incorporated Ford Motor Co.

Pre-auction estimates had pegged the sale price at between $400,000 and $800,000.

"History, history, history," O'Quinn told Reuters, when asked why he bought the vehicle. "There are a lot of great cars in the world, but Ford is the basic car of America."

The rare vehicle has had only four owners since it rolled out of the shop on Mack Avenue in Detroit along with two other cars.

It was originally sold to butter-maker Herbert McNary of Britt, Iowa, who plunked down a $170 deposit on the $880 vehicle. It was last owned by an undisclosed individual who bought it in 2001.

For however long the link lasts, here is the auctioneer's webpage about the car.

Descent

(T)Hugo Chavez has had his rubber stamp legislature grant their seal of approval to his demand that he be allowed to dictate law by executive fiat. Venezuela has begun the descent into dictatorship and rule by personality cult.

Venezuela's National Assembly has given initial approval to a bill granting the president the power to bypass congress and rule by decree for 18 months.

President Hugo Chavez says he wants "revolutionary laws" to enact sweeping political, economic and social changes.

He has said he wants to nationalise key sectors of the economy and scrap limits on the terms a president can serve.

Mr Chavez began his third term in office last week after a landslide election victory in December.

The bill allowing him to enact laws by decree is expected to win final approval easily in the assembly on its second reading on Tuesday.

Venezuela's political opposition has no representation in the National Assembly since it boycotted elections in 2005.

A couple of points. First: Boycotting elections: Dumb ass move, every time. Second: To the misguided who keep spouting about how Bush is seizing power, forming an imperial presidency, blah, blah, blah. This is what a real power grab to form a dictatorship looks like. This is a coup and Venezuela is about to enter a very, very dark night. This is dressing up a dictatorship with the faux trappings of democracy. The Venezuelan Congress is effectively dead as a real legislative body as of today. Now they exist only at the pleasure of (T)Hugo. And he won't be pleased if anyone opposes him. Expect a flood of refugees escaping Venezuela.

UPDATE: TigerHawk has a simple, elegant suggestion to help solve this. Yes, it has real problems but it really is something that would help quell this kind of thing in the future as well.  The Reaction sort of gets half of it. Still a bit confused about what a real dictatorship looks like as opposed to a "Hollywood in your head" version of reality. The Belmont Club half-jokingly seconds Tigerhawk's half-joking suggestion.

UPDATE: QandO and a "'natch". Clue for Kathy here: Look very, very closely at (T)hugo's behavior and try to figure out how that is not the same as your "liberal" interpretation of reality in the US. (I'm quite sure that will provoke yet another Clueproof® screed.)

UPDATE: Others: Captain's Quarters, TMV, The Liberty Papers, Never Yet Melted, Stuck In The Middle, Dr. Sanity,

Sadr Afraid

The Guardian reports that Moqtada al Sadr is afraid he is a target in the crackdown in Baghdad. He has accordingly moved his family to an undisclosed location and will undoubtedly follow in short order. He'll rabbit, he won't stand with the fools he has conned into following him.

Moqtada al-Sadr has moved his family to a secure location because of fears he will become the target of a security sweep of Baghdad, it was reported today.

News of the radical cleric's decision came as the US military said it had detained a suspected death squad leader.

Aides to Mr Sadr described the arrest of the man, named as Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, as a "provocation", saying he was a spokesman for their movement.

"We are angry," Abdul-Mehdi al-Matiri told Reuters. "This is a kind of revenge. Sheikh Darraji deals with the media. He is not a military man."

A US military statement said the man had been arrested by Iraqi special forces, backed by US advisers, on suspicion of kidnap, torture and murder.

One of Washington's prime concerns is how to cope with the Mahdi Army - loyal to Mr Sadr - and other Shia militia carrying out murders in Sunni communities in the Iraqi capital and elsewhere……

…..In an interview with Mr Sadr, published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica today, the cleric said 400 of his men had already been arrested.

"For this reason, I have moved my family to a secure location. I even have had a will drawn up, and I move continuously in a way that only few can know where I am," he was quoted as saying.

"But even if I were to die, Mahdi would continue to exist. Men can be killed. Faith and ideas cannot," he said.

Mr Sadr said his men would not fight during the Islamic month of Muharram, which marks the death of Muhammad's grandson Hussein, but that afterwards "we'll see".

Odds on, he'll be in Tehran in a week or two, cheerfully exhorting his followers to fight to the last drop of their blood.

Things You Find In The Logs

Here's an interesting little tidbit that came up in the Sitemeter logs today. Word Around the Net did a wee bit of debunking back on Tuesday. It is a very, very thorough dismantling of a column by Australian Terry Lane that appeared in The Age.

There is a factoid on the Internet that pops up once in a while on message boards and blogs about the Grand Canyon and the park service. Recently, it became part of an Australian columnist's latest work:

There is a good America. A great America. But it is not Bush's America. Or his father's. Or the America of Reagan, Nixon and Kissinger.

Here's an amusing example of the divide between good and bad America. A recent press release from the organisation Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility draws attention to the fact that rangers in the Grand Canyon National Park are forbidden to answer visitors' questions about the age of the canyon because the truth will upset Bush's fundamentalist supporters. However, Bush's National Parks Service refuses to withdraw from sale in the park bookshop a book that explains how the canyon was formed by Noah's flood.

Mr Rudd might care to explain how it is in our national interest to have an alliance with a government that is a self-evident force for stupidity as well as cruelty.

I've read this several places, always asserted without the slightest effort to support the position. Sometimes people even claim they just came back from the national park, breathless from the run and had to dash to a keyboard to type in this horrible fact. Now, given that this is by columnist Terry Lane, who was so willing to believe the sad tales of Jesse MacBeth that he didn't bother to take the slightest effort to research the validity of these tales he wrote about it in a previous column.

When caught short, he offered to resign because he'd failed to do his job as a journalist and study the case before presuming it was true - a case of confirmation bias, where you believe something because you want it to be true or it fits what you believe to be true, rather than based on any study. It confirms your opinions, so you figure it to be accurate. Terry Lane's way of putting it was "I fell for it because I wanted to believe it." The Age, the paper Mr Lane writes for, refused to accept the resignation, and Mr Lane plugs on.

Go read it all, Christopher Taylor did a lot of legwork - or phone work - and debunks this one completely. But there's more interrelated posting going on from Tim Blair today as well. Which includes a rather firm smackdown of the lamentable trainwreck that Gary Trudeau has become. I have an indirect story about Gary Trudeau I'll tell some time. His father was my grandmother's doctor for many years. In fact, old Doc Trudeau treated me now and then back in the day, my mother told me.

UPDATE: I know Christopher Taylor referenced this as did Tim Blair, but it is, I think, worthy of pulling out seperately. Skeptic magazine has formally retracted it's claims about the National Park Service and has distanced itself from PEER, the group that made the fraudulent claims that kicked this whole thing off. Michael Shermer does a thorough, if very belated, effort to get to the bottom of PEER's accusations, but comes up empty. There is no there there, so to speak. If you read it, it is quite evident that PEER, or the director of the group (which may well be one and the same for all we know) appears to have outright fabricated the entire accusation. He certainly did not - at all - prove the validity of the charge. Shermer, however, diminished what should have been - and could have been - an exemplary retraction by taking a cheap shot right at the start.

UPDATE: Others: Ed Driscoll, Clayton Cramer,

Al Gore In Texas?

At least three dozen juvenile green sea turtles had to be rescued from a shallow bay on South Padre Island, Texas when the water temperature plummeted 18 degrees in just 48 hours. The turtle-sicles were comatose from the shocking drop in temperature and had to be rushed by volunteers to a rescue facility where they were placed on slow broil under heat lamps until they recovered enough to be fed Romain lettuce. (There is no way of telling how many turtle-bergs are still bobbing about in the bay, unfortunately.)

The cold-blooded animals were left comatose by the rapid temperature drop this week in the shallow bay where the young turtles feed. Animal rescuers feared the cold would kill the turtles or make them so sluggish as to be vulnerable to sharks.

Volunteers, students and others scooped them up from the surf, bundled them in blankets and towels and took them to the privately run Sea Turtle Inc. rescue center and a University of Texas marine laboratory.

The juvenile green turtles were scrubbed clean of grime, then put under a heat lamp until their eyes opened and their flippers twitched — signs they were reviving and ready to be put in 66- to 68-degree holding tanks and feed on romaine lettuce.

Green turtles are born off the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula and spend their early years feeding on turtle grass in shallow bay areas such as South Padre's Laguna Madre. When they are mature — 15 to 20 years old and weighing about 500 pounds — they return to Mexican waters to breed.

But a cold spell that sent the mercury plummeting into the 30s on Monday and Tuesday caused the water temperature to fall into the 50s. The turtles' systems began shutting down, and they started washing ashore.

Given the well documented Gore Effect, we strongly suspect that Al Gore was in the immediate area. He can now claim credit for inventing chilled turtle! What a guy!

More about the Sea Turtle, Inc. organization here. Nice job on the save, folks).

Turning Over Rocks

Still more things emerging from under freshly turned rocks at the United Nations. Fox News is reporting that the US State Department has sent a formal complaint to the UN alleging serious misconduct in the United Nations Development Program operations in North Korea since at least 1998. The complaint is based on the UN's own audits which appear to have found serious violations of UN regulations.

Moreover, the period of scandal and secrecy in the UNDP’s North Korean operations coincided in large measure with the tenure of Mark Malloch Brown, most recently Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations itself, as administrator of the UNDP.

Malloch Brown took over the UNDP in July 1999, and stayed in his post even after August 2005, when he also became chief of staff for then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who at the time was reeling under the effects of the Oil for Food scandal.

In March 2006, Malloch Brown took over as Deputy Secretary General from Louise Frechette, who suddenly left the U.N. ahead of schedule, after her own role in Oil for Food became widely known and criticized. Only then did Malloch Brown give up his UNDP fiefdom.

Malloch Brown left the U.N. along with Annan at the end of last year and has since been harshly critical of the Bush Administration and its former ambassador to the U.N., John Bolton, for their demands for greater U.N. transparency and reform.

From at least 1999 to at least 2004, it appears the UNDP, and the U.N. itself, had no idea what Kim Jong Il did with the aid agency’s money, ostensibly intended for aid programs ranging from development of energy programs and small and medium sized businesses, and for environmental protection.

But the UNDP had plenty of warnings from auditors it had contracted to look at the program during that period, and who signaled loudly that something was badly awry.

In a letter sent to the UNDP on Jan. 16, Mark Wallace, the U.S. State Department ambassador at the U.N. for management and reform, wrote that the auditors’ testimony shows it is “impossible” for the U.N. aid agency to verify whether its funds “have actually been used for bona fide development purposes or if the DPRK [North Korea] has converted such funds for its own illicit purposes.”

Since this news report came out, Congressional Republicans have begun calling for an end to programs in North Korea and Ban Ki-Moon has called for an urgent outside inquiry into all of the development programs. I think Ban is showing some real promise as Secretary General. One wonders if certain former officials will be moving to Cyprus soon.

The Ultimate Threat Of Global Warming! FAT MOOSE!

A Norwegian researcher is predicting the ultimate calamity of calamities as a result of global warming. Ginormousy overweight moose will soon be rolling down the mountains of Norway crushing puny humans with abandon. All because they no longer have to eat sticks in the winter.

"If mild winters without snow continue, elk (known as moose in North America) will become fatter and fatter," a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Nature Research, Erling Solberg, told daily Dagbladet.

"Usually in winter they eat branches, which are not very nutritious, but the lack of snow means elk are stuffing themselves on berries, especially blueberries," Solberg added.

"In winter elk lose weight but with these highly nutritious food sources available, they start the next season a great deal larger than they would do normally," Solberg said.

Soon large, spherical, brown-furred objects will be hurtling all over the Norwegian landscape. My god, this is worse than the impact of global warming on Swedish gingerbread houses, if that's possible! Fortunately, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard stand ready to help out the old country. Obviously, the new zeppelin shaped elk will no longer resemble the current profile used on Norwegian warning signs. Those currently look like this:

We are providing, gratis, a new and improved elk crossing warning sign. We call it the Solberg variant:

WARNING: “Storm Worm”

This is pretty important. An internet worm has been sent around potentially infecting thousands of computers. The worm was embedded in an email titled, "230 dead as storm batters Europe." If you opened such an email you may have a problem. In addition, I just deleted an email (before I even read this article) that had another title referencing storms in California. I rather suspect it may have been the same sort of trick.

The virus, which the company named "Storm Worm," was emailed to hundreds of thousands of addresses globally with the subject line "230 dead as storm batters Europe."

An attached file contained so-called malware that can infiltrate computer systems.

"What makes this exceptional is the timely nature of the attack," Mikko Hypponen, head of research at Finnish data security firm F-Secure (FSC1V.HE), told Reuters.

Please be alert for things like this. I suspect there will be more of this happening.

Suburban Snakes

The Telegraph reports that the reptile legions of the Animal Uprising™, having conquered Australia, have decided they want the good life. Accordingly, the snakes are moving into fancy new digs in the suburbs.

Australia's severe drought is driving deadly snakes out of the bush and into towns and cities, with three people dying from bites in the past few weeks.

The snakes are seeking out water in ponds, drains and swimming pools in the suburbs.

George Braitberg, co-director of a toxicology centre in Melbourne, said: "Across Australia we're seeing far more snakebites than we have had for many years."

Since the snakes, particularly the extremely dangerous brown snake, have moved into the 'burbs, we thought we'd provide a link to a snake identification and first aid page from Australia (we actually do have readers from Oz and would prefer they continue to visit). The most important thing to remember is to apply pressure to the wound and to stay still. Send someone else for help.

Protests Against The Animal Uprisingâ„¢ Increase

Some animals want no part whatsoever in the Animal Uprising™ that the animal warlords are promoting worldwide. A small group has decided it is time to take it to the streets to protest. Members of the anti-Animal Uprising™ group "Code Fleece" mounted a demonstration in Chester-le-Street, England.

It was not so much a traffic jam, more a traffic ram. This was the astonishing sight that greeted a town's residents when they opened their doors -a flock of 150 sheep having a field day in the middle of the road.

The animals had escaped from their pasture after a gate was blown open and came bustling into Chester-le-Street, County Durham.

Police rounded up the woolly wanderers and corralled them in Rickleton Avenue to stop them wandering on to the busy A1(M) while they called a farmer to collect them.

(There's a very funny picture at the link).

Seals Take In A Movie

A fierce storm that lashed the Netherlands led a group of Animal Uprising™ seals to reach a temporary truce with humans. Needing a place to wait out the gale, the seals decided to take in a movie at the local cinema.

The Pieterburen refuge for seals that get swept off the Baltic Sea became besieged after the storm hit Thursday, its director, Lenie 't Hart, told the ANP Dutch news agency Friday.

Tents used to house the seals had to be taken down because of the high winds and t'Hart said local people helped put up the seals.

"Some went in my office, others in the visitors' welcome centre and there was even a group in the cinema," 't Hart said.

There is no report on what movie the theater was showing, but we do understand that the seals went Dutch.

On A Completely Different Note

The newest product to hit the trendy market is what is being billed as a "musical condom". While a bit of a misnomer, better for a snappy headline, the marketing concept ties a box of flavored condoms with a music CD.

Hong Kong's Ondo Creation, which makes designer condoms, hopes its Idom sheathes will put a more romantic spin on safe sex — and reduce the risk of a slap on the face that a pack of six might elicit among some conservative Asians.

The Idom itself doesn't sing — but the mint, strawberry, chocolate and banana flavoured condoms come in an attractive package with a music CD to get you in the mood for love.

"We create an environment for lovers who would like to try a different experience," said Victor Tsang who runs Ondo Creation.

"We try to create products that are not embarrassing, but very trendy and hip. It's a lifestyle product," he added.

Cynics may scoff at the marketing gloss, but the 18 month start-up's products sell across the world. The firm also won a bronze medal in the Industrial Design Excellence Awards run in conjunction with BusinessWeek magazine, which said Ondo had managed to "revitalise the image of condoms".

It is actually a clever marketing campaign. The company sells only to trendy upscale stores, not the corner convenience store. But if they really want to hit the big time, we recommend that they follow up the musical condom with something really impressive. The answering cervix.

Ethics Bill Passes Senate

With what appears to have been a very cleverly negotiated settlement, the Senate ethics reform bill that Washington Post reporter Jonathan Weisman had declared "scuttled by Republicans" passed last night. The Gregg amendment was taken out of that bill and instead will be brought to a floor vote attached to another bill next week. Apparently, Harry Reid realized the WaPo cover wasn't enough to shield him from criticism no matter how much spin he applied. Interestingly, what was being described as a "bipartisan" bill only yesterday is being hailed as the "Democrat's bill" now that it has passed. The spin goes on. (Feel free to heap scorn on Weisman's "reporting".)

 Under the bill, passed 96-2, senators will give up gifts and free travel from lobbyists, pay more for travel on corporate jets and make themselves more accountable for the pet projects they insert into bills.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who made the bill his first initiative as head of the Senate, called it the "most significant legislation in ethics and lobbying reform we've had in the history of this country."

The Senate did reject the idea of setting up an independent office to investigate the ethical breaches of members. But it said that spouses of sitting members will no longer be able to lobby the Senate and lobbyists can no longer pay for extravagant parties for members at national conventions.

Passage of the bill came a day after the measure appeared dead, the victim of a test of will between the two parties.

Republicans were angry they could not get a vote on a proposal giving the president, with congressional approval, more power to kill single spending items in larger bills. So GOP senators voted against a resolution needed to move the bill to final passage.

On Thursday morning, both sides accused the other of killing the bill and betraying the trust of voters who had demanded that Congress clean up its act.

"What this maneuver shows is that the Republican leadership hasn't learned the lessons of the 2006 election," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.

"The Democrat leadership does not have to kill this legislation," countered Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. "I believe that we owe it to the voters as well as the institution to come to a fair agreement and pass this legislation."

Under the agreement reached Thursday, the sponsor of the line-item veto amendment, Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., will be allowed to offer his proposal as part of the next bill to reach the Senate floor, a proposal to raise the minimum wage while giving small businesses several tax breaks. That will take place on Monday.

Earmark reform is needed desperately. The ethics bill, for all the praise being heaped on it, does not go anywhere near far enough to address the real problems. Being able to force pork barrel spending into the daylight and forcing up or down votes on those items is a necessary first step to really addressing the issues. This is not a partisan issue; it is for the good of the entire country. Stop the pork.

Top Al Sadr Aide Arrested

Iraqi government forces, along with American troops raided a house in Eastern Baghdad and arrested one of the top aides to thug Moqtada al Sadr just after midnight on Friday. One Mahdi Army guard was killed in the operation that seized Sheik Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, Sadr's media director in Baghdad. (Which actually says a lot about the situation over there. A thug militia guilty of murdering thousands has a media director.)

Sheik Abdul-Hadi al-Darraji, Sadr's media director in Baghdad, was arrested at a house in the eastern neighborhood of Baladiyat, said Abdul Razak al-Nadawi, a spokesman for Sadr. The spokesman said one of Sadr's guards was killed during the operation. The house is adjacent to a mosque, the spokesman said. At least two other men were taken into custody, according to the U.S. military.

Nadawi said Sadr "condemns the operation," and has asked supporters to take to the streets after the Friday prayer to protest the arrest.

"After that we will take dangerous decisions that will not have any benefits for the country," the spokesman warned.

Darraji is suspected of participating in the assassination of Iraqi security force members and politicians, according to a statement issued by the U.S. military.

"The suspect allegedly leads various illegal armed group operations and is affiliated with illegal armed group cells targeting Iraqi civilians for sectarian attacks and violence," the statement says.

Nadawi said: "The American strategy now is to arrest all the Sadr leaders; they are not fighting them because Mahdi Army is not fighting."

Next up: Sadr himself. Watch for Moqtada to rabbit for the Iranian border very soon. If he hasn't already. The change in American tactics is having some positive results already. The stripping away of political protection for Sadr and his gang is having an immediate, positive effect.