Salvation!

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have found a solution for Germany's raging raccoon insurrection! (Do we get a commission or something for this?) The town of Hibernia, Indiana in the good, old US of A will take all the German raccoons it can get.

And eat them.

HIBERNIA, Ind. - After a four-year absence, raccoon is back on the menu for the Hibernia Community Building's annual fundraiser. LaVeran Lorenz, 86, has agreed to resume cooking duties for the March 24 event — with a little help with the cleaning. "It's not like cleaning a chicken, I'll tell you that," said Dina Woods, one of Lorenz's neighbors who agreed to learn how to clean raccoons for cooking.

Allus Franklin and other hunters in the town on Hibernia Road off Indiana 62 about 20 miles north of Louisville, Ky., have bagged 103 raccoons for the event. "When they told us, we'd already caught 40," he said.

…..

Turkey will also be served for those who don't have a taste for the wild meat, along with dressing and gravy, parsley potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans and rolls.

Franklin said raccoon meat's flavor is similar to pork.

"You'd be surprised," he said. "People like them."

If German hunters send all of the annual harvest of 30,000 or so raccoon carcasses to Hibernia, poor Ms. Lorenz may need a bit more help in the kitchen. We here in the Crabitat have a vitally important appointment to sort a sock drawer and will not be available to help gut, dress and roast the surprisingly pork-like creatures. But we heartily endorse the efforts of Hibernia (and Ms. Lorenz in particular) to rid the world of the ravaging raccoon hordes. One tasty rib at a time.

Flash!

Iranian lawmaker still ticked that Xerxes I got his butt kicked as a result of the Greek stand at Thermopylae! No, really. He is seriously miffed.

An Iranian official on Sunday lashed out at the Hollywood movie "300" for insulting the Persian civilization, local Fars News Agency reported.

Javad Shamqadri, an art advisor to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, accused the new movie of being "part of a comprehensive U.S. psychological war aimed at Iranian culture", said the report.

Shamqadri was quoted as saying "following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Hollywood and cultural authorities in the U.S. initiated studies to figure out how to attack Iranian culture," adding "certainly, the recent movie is a product of such studies."

The movie's effort wound be fruitless, because "values in Iranian culture and the Islamic Revolution are too strongly seated to be damaged by such plans", said the Iranin official.

Shamqadri, who is also a filmmaker, said that production of more domestic and artistic films which portray Iranian achievements is a proper response to movies like "300".

Ah, yes. A long list of official Iranian government achievements since the revolution would include, death, destruction, hate, rhetoric and the export of terrorism, wholesale. Lots to brag about there, Javad. Thermopylae (where Xerxes got his butt kicked) was over close to 2,500 years ago. Let it go. (Xerxes did, however, get his butt handed to him as a result of that stand by the 300 - and quite a lot more volunteers who don't get equal billing).

Taking Al To The Woodshed

A spanking from the New York Times (what the heck is up with that?) for Al Gore on his hyperventilating pomposity on global warming! Oh, sure, they give his defenders the last word. But this, from the Times, is harsh, indeed. Saint Al of the Massive Megawattage has been called out - hard - by actual scientists who think he's radically overstated (some are all but calling him a liar, frankly) the concept of global warming as a man-made phenomenon.

But part of his scientific audience is uneasy. In talks, articles and blog entries that have appeared since his film and accompanying book came out last year, these scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central points are exaggerated and erroneous. They are alarmed, some say, at what they call his alarmism.

“I don’t want to pick on Al Gore,” Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, told hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. “But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”

Mr. Gore, in an e-mail exchange about the critics, said his work made “the most important and salient points” about climate change, if not “some nuances and distinctions” scientists might want. “The degree of scientific consensus on global warming has never been stronger,” he said, adding, “I am trying to communicate the essence of it in the lay language that I understand.”

Although Mr. Gore is not a scientist, he does rely heavily on the authority of science in “An Inconvenient Truth,” which is why scientists are sensitive to its details and claims.

……

Other critics have zeroed in on Mr. Gore’s claim that the energy industry ran a “disinformation campaign” that produced false discord on global warming. The truth, he said, was that virtually all unbiased scientists agreed that humans were the main culprits. But Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters, challenged the claim of scientific consensus with examples of pointed disagreement.

“Hardly a week goes by,” Dr. Peiser said, “without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory,” including some reports that offer alternatives to human activity for global warming.

Geologists have documented age upon age of climate swings, and some charge Mr. Gore with ignoring such rhythms.

“Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet,” Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia, said in a September blog. “Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.” (Emphasis added)

Which is, of course, the one really, really big elephant in the room. There have been really large variations in temperatures in the past. Man could not have been a factor in any way, shape or form in those. Unless those neolithic humans and their stone tools were a heck of a lot more efficient at screwing with the temperatures than we can imagine today. Flint tools cause global warming. Who knew?

Frankly, I have had the true believers flock here. I have had the Koz Kidz speculate as to whether they could "turn" me. (Short answer - no.) But none really want to address that one big elephant. They try to obscure it by saying the rate of change is different but still don't actually step up and talk to the elephant. Or discuss publicity stunts gone wrong, either. Personally, I think the burning of oil for energy is stupid in the long run. Starving people to fuel vehicles is even more stupid. There are things that can be doing - incrementally - to make it better. But the Gorezilla's mammoth energy consumption while pontificating is not - at all - helpful. (That he also buys his "carbon offsets" from himself while consuming gargantuan amounts of electricity also makes him a flagrant hypocrite.)

(Prediction - in the long run, Gore has done serious damage to the movement of the First Church of the Presumptuous Assumption of Global Warming®. Despite his Oscar. Or maybe because of it.)

Ravenous Raccoons Ravage Rhineland

The first American invasion of Germany did not occur in 1945. It actually started in the 1930's when the vicious warlords of the Animal Uprising™ first released their ravening followers on the unsuspecting German populace. Seventy-plus years on and the conquest of Germany is nearing completion. The raccoons are winning.

It's an invasion that has many in Germany up in arms. Literally. The raccoon population is exploding in the country — as witnessed by the rapidly increasing numbers of them being shot by German hunters — and nature lovers are not happy. Worse, the furry interlopers have no natural predators here and are therefore free to breed at their leisure.

They are not making themselves popular. Wine-makers in the region of Annenwalde in the state of Brandenburg have taken to protecting their vines from raccoons with electric fences and guard dogs, while cherry farmers in Witzenhausen in Hesse state complain that the 'coons steal their fruit.

And other species are losing out too. "The raccoon has become the scourge of the bird world," says Bernd Möller from the Brandenburg hunters' association. "They get their little paws on everything and they love to steal the eggs of ducks on nature reserves."…..

……Although exact figures of raccoon populations in Germany are not available, the numbers of raccoons shot give a rough indication of demographic trends. In the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds Berlin, hunters killed 41 raccoons in 1990. In the last hunting season, it was 5,712. A total of 30,000 were killed across Germany in the last year, more than three times the number killed six years ago.

And the bestest news of all for the suffering German humans? The raccoon legions like the cities even better than they do the countryside! Sleep well, Berlin!

Boffo B Movies In The Offing!

Hollywood, hoping to catch the Gorezilla wave, are going back in time to recapture the golden era of B movies! Only this time it isn't the atomic bomb they are scarifying about! No, this is big news! They plan on making all of mankind the villain for doing damage to Gaia! Yes, environmental catastrophe is the order of the day for the folks in Hollyweird.

LOS ANGELES, March 11 — Tired of abuse by mankind, the earth is angry. Worse, the planet is out to even the score.

Audiences can expect a story along those lines when M. Night Shyamalan’s film “The Happening” reaches screens in the next year. The project, to which 20th Century Fox signed on last week, imagines a planet that is starting to act like the vigilante Travis Bickle from “Taxi Driver.”

“The Happening” will not be the only big-budget studio film to test a new kind of villainy, in which the real victim is the environment, and, whatever the plot variations, the enemy is all of us. Beginning this summer and for months after, movies as diverse as the “The Simpsons Movie,” “Transformers,” a remake of “Creature From the Black Lagoon,” and James Cameron’s “Avatar” will take on environmental themes.

Dumping popular Hollywood villains of the past — drug lords, aliens, North Korean dictators, even the news media — for an environmental bête noire carries risks for studios that don’t mind frightening viewers, as long as it’s all in fun. But it also hints at the possibility of more sophisticated entertainment, and perhaps even the kind of impact that “The China Syndrome,” with Jane Fonda and Michael Douglas, exerted on the nuclear power industry when it came out in 1979.

Why stop there? Why not look deeply into the great impact the all-time great Them! had on the world? Or Godzilla! That gave us decades of Raymond Burr! Or even better, The 30-Foot Bride of Candy Rock! Yes, today's Hollywood giants are working diligently to produce the next generation's fond, but laughable, memories! You gotta love it.

Has Hollywood had anything approaching an original thought in generations? Or do they just recycle until their audiences leave?

The Celebrated Lethal Frog Of Calaveras County

…….Well, Shirley kept the beast in a little lattice box, and she used to fetch him down town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller a stranger in the camp, he was come across him with his box, and says:

"What might it be that you've got in the box?"

And Shirley says, sorter indifferent like, "It might be a parrot, or it might be a canary, may be, but it an't it's only just a frog."

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round this way and that, and says, "H'm so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?"

"Well," Shirley says, easy and careless, "He's good enough for one thing, I should judge he can outkill any frog in Calaveras county."

The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look, and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, "Well, I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

"May be you don't," Shirley says. "May be you understand frogs, and may be you don't understand 'em; may be you've had experience, and may be you an't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll risk forty dollars that he can outkill any frog in Calaveras county."

And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well, I'm only a stranger here, and I an't got no frog; but if I had a frog, I'd bet you."

And then Shirley says, "That's all right that's all right if you'll hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog." And so the feller took the box, and put up his forty dollars along with Shirley's, and set down to wait.

So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then he got the frog out and tried to pour some lead shot down its throat, kinda the way that Twain feller told the story about some silly jumpin' frog a while back. Only the frog warn't particularly happy with the thought of being a paperweight and reared up and ripped the strangers throat out.

As he lay dyin' Shirley prodded him with the tip of her boot, took his forty dollars and said, "Told ya."

(With apologies both to Mark Twain and Hurricane Shirley who sent the link about San Francisco's killer frogs via comments.)

Global Warming Publicity Stunt Canceled Due To Frostbite

You know, we try really hard around here to come up with the occasional bit of humor. It helps, we think, take a little edge off the political rages that are swirling these days. But we have our limits of what we can reasonably dream up or link to. Because it has to be believable, at least on some level. But we could not begin to make up this one: A trek across the Arctic designed to draw attention to global warming had to be canceled when one of the participants got frostbite.

Due to extremely - very, very extremely - cold temperatures. Like more than 100° F below zero extreme.

Bancroft, 51, became the first woman to cross the North Pole on a 1986 expedition. She and Arnesen, 53, of Oslo, Norway, were the first women to ski across Antarctica in 2001.

But the latest trek got off to a bad start. The day they set off from Ward Hunt Island, a plane landing near the women hit their gear, punching a hole in Bancroft's sled and damaging one of Arnesen's snowshoes.

They repaired the snowshoe with binding from a ski, but Atwood said the patch job created pressure on Arnesen's left foot, which led to blisters that then turned into frostbite.

Then there was the cold - quite a bit colder, Atwood said, then Bancroft and Arnesen had expected. One night they measured the temperature inside their tent at 58 degrees below zero, and outside temperatures were exceeding 100 below zero at times, Atwood said.

"My first reaction when they called to say there were calling it off was that they just sounded really, really cold," Atwood said.

She said Bancroft and Arnesen were applying hot water bottles to Arnesen's foot every night, but had to wake up periodically because the bottles froze. (Emphasis added)

We could not have made that one up. People would have thought we were crazy. Well, more crazy than TC's friend already considers us. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard would really like to know exactly where AlGore was when all this was happening. And if he was in the vicinity, why didn't he have an extension cord to loan the poor, frozen global warming activists? They could have plugged in to Al's gargantuan electric supply and gotten a little heat.

Oh, never mind. That electricity is all for him. Our bad.

UPDATE: Ace: It's called "weather". Small Dead Animals: As you were. Right Wing News: Colder equals warmer! Misha: Bloody Weather. Cafe Hayek: Everything - all of it - has now been explained!

Chucky Decides!

Chucky "Janus" Hagel has reached a decision after much soul (or is that "sole") searching! He reached a decision about running after the departing Presidential nomination bandwagon (which actually left quite some time ago). He has firmly reached a decision not to decide anything until he sees if he can get more than a quarter or two from a couple of folks on the street.

In postponing a decision on whether to run for president, Sen. Chuck Hagel may have turned a maverick campaign into a real long shot.

The decorated Vietnam veteran and chief Republican critic of the war in Iraq today stopped short of making a decision about either pursuing a White House bid or seeking a third Senate term. He said he wants to keep his options open.

"I believe there will still be political options open to me at a later date," he said during a press conference at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.

Several political analysts said Hagel could have a much tougher time running for president by waiting…..

…..Hagel said he would actively raise money for a Senate re-election bid in 2008, dashing hopes of many supporters who were expecting him to move toward a White House run.

Money he raises for a Senate re-election campaign could be transferred to a presidential bid. He'll also hold fundraisers for his political action committee, Sandhills PAC.

Hagel's non-announcement put him further behind other candidates who are actively engaged in raising money, building organizations, expanding their name recognition and campaigning in early-deciding states such as Iowa and New Hampshire.

"He obviously marches to his own drumbeat. But it is a beat the rest of us can't follow," Sabato said.

We're pretty sure that's the Vulcan Mild-Meld Polka in 63/64 time that he's marching along to. Or something from Barney. But we digress. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are proud to bring you this actual, real-live Perfesshnal Wire Service Grade® photo of Chucky's announcement.

Please send exactly 7 cents to Chucky's campaign to demonstrate your support and show what you think of his media-bestowed "maverick" status! Why 7¢? Heck, that way they'll know we sent you!

This Pains Me

It is actually painful to write this post. After all my fun with Microsoft lately, after all the unpleasant things I have said about them, after all the new and interesting word combinations I have come up with in the Crabitat while fighting computers, I have to thank them. That's right, I have to thank Microsoft. Really. They have put a live scanner online called Windows Live OneCare where their software will scan your computer and fix a lot of problems.

For free.

The scanner found and killed the trojan that the kids got on one computer and the registry tool found and corrected a bunch (a very large bunch) of registry errors that other registry tools had missed completely. All of the Crabitat's Windows computers have now been scanned. And they are running perfectly, even the one the kids nearly killed. And I did not have to strip and reinstall the operating system (which takes the better part of a day, I've found). Give it a try if you're running a Windows computer. (I dunno if it works with anything but Windows XP since that is all I am running at the moment.)

Chucky Suspense Builds

Even if it is only in the mind of the folks at the Omaha World Herald. They have an article about Chucky "Janus" Hagel and his press conference scheduled for this morning. But Hagel has apparently been successful in keeping advance information about what he is planning away from the reporters.

Hagel, whose current Senate term is up after 2008, could set up a presidential exploratory committee, delay a formal campaign until later or bow out of the White House race. Some have even speculated that he might run as an independent, although he previously seemed to rule that out.

Working in his favor, it is still early in the 2008 contest, and Republicans seem divided over their allegiances to the previously announced candidates. Some political analysts say there is room for another candidate to join the field.

Many Nebraska politicians planned to attend this morning's announcement, including Attorney General Jon Bruning and Gov. Dave Heineman. Both received invitations from Hagel.

State GOP chief Quandahl said he would be there. He said he's been fielding calls about Hagel's plans for weeks.

"Somebody the other day called me and said I sound like Sergeant Schultz on 'Hogan's Heroes,' because: I know nothing. And that's the truth," Quandahl said.

"We're all waiting for the decision," added Bruning, who is considering a bid for U.S. Senate in the event Hagel does not seek a third term.

I'll repeat what I have said before: Hagel has zero chance at a Republican nomination for President. He knows it. If he announces, it will be in an effort to get a third party endorsement. But he's unelectable regardless. Despite the hyperventilating from the press.

The Honeymoon Is Over

Wow, what a surprising morning it is turning into. The media, Reuters this time, is jumping on another Democrat. This time it is Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick in the cross hairs. It would appear that the governor is in a wee bit of trouble over some lapses in judgment, as they put it.

The former top U.S. civil-rights enforcer in the Clinton administration has publicly apologized twice in recent weeks over separate errors of judgment in what some expected to be a honeymoon period marked by the return of a bold, liberal agenda to one of the nation's most socially progressive states.

The most recent mea culpa followed a February 20 telephone call he made to a senior executive at financial giant Citigroup, which has businesses regulated by the state, to personally vouch for a controversial lending firm where he was once a board member.

The call to Robert Rubin, a former U.S. treasury secretary, was made on behalf of the owners of Ameriquest Mortgage as they sought financial assistance from the financial services giant.

The call was seen as a conflict of interest and roundly criticized in part because Ameriquest has been accused of predatory lending, a practice that has led to a rise in property foreclosures in Massachusetts.

Republicans have called for an ethics investigation.

Patrick apologized on Wednesday. "I will make mistakes, but don't give up on me, because I don't intend to give up on Massachusetts," he told reporters.

That incident followed an outcry over decisions to upgrade his state car to an expensive Cadillac that cost taxpayers $1,166 a month and to spend $27,000 on drapes and other new office fittings while asking other departments to curb spending.

Ouch. That's going to leave a mark. Funny how the media can turn on you in politics, isn't it?

Slapping Down Pelosi

Surprisingly, the Los Angeles Times takes Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats to the woodshed over their "plan" to impose a timetable on the war. They are polite but quite clear that the strategy is bad and completely wrong.

By interfering with the discretion of the commander in chief and military leaders in order to fulfill domestic political needs, Congress undermines whatever prospects remain of a successful outcome. It's absurd for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) to try to micromanage the conflict, and the evolution of Iraqi society, with arbitrary timetables and benchmarks.

Congress should not hinder Bush's ability to seek the best possible endgame to this very bad war. The president needs the leeway to threaten, or negotiate with, Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds, Syrians and Iranians and Turks. Congress can find many ways to express its view that U.S. involvement, certainly at this level, must not go on indefinitely, but it must not limit the president's ability to maneuver at this critical juncture.

Bush's wartime leadership does not inspire much confidence. But he has made adjustments to his team, and there's little doubt that a few hundred legislators do not a capable commander in chief make. These aren't partisan judgments — we also condemned Republican efforts to micromanage President Clinton's conduct of military operations in the Balkans.

The partisan posturing on this is too much for even the LAT to stomach. The Democratic leadership might want to take note that they are losing media support for their antics. That could spell disaster for the party in the long run. They have bet the farm on losing this war. It is not a good idea to bet against America in the long run.