The Ultimate Political Insult

So a candidate for city council in Missouri City, Missouri stands for election, but then suffers the absolute worst political insult possible. When the votes were counted, he hadn't received any. None at all. Not even one from himself.

And he was running unopposed.

Selle, who was running unopposed for City Council, didn't get any votes at all. Not even one from himself.

Selle, 42, said he simply forgot that Tuesday was election day, and apparently so did Ward 3's other 34 registered voters.

The result was zero votes cast in Selle's race, but the city charter lets him keep the seat unless someone else is "successfully elected and qualified," the city attorney said.

Selle is a professional musician. He sure isn't much of a politician!

Kill Aliens And Stop Global Warming

It's all so simple, really. Just kill all the aliens, destroy their nuclear reactor and save the planet from global warming. Why didn't we think of this before.

NEW YORK, April 5 (Reuters) - Two university professors have combined their knowledge of science and videogames to create a game that helps students learn chemistry.

Instead of using books, beakers and test tubes, students battle aliens and other mysterious forces that are trying to destroy the earth by increasing global warming.

"Using gaming technology to supplement science instruction involves a different level of interactivity for students," said Carlos Morales, an associate professor of computer graphics technology at Purdue University in Indiana.

"Listening to lectures and taking tests is not authentic to the real world and the way we learn concepts," he added in a statement.

Oh, wait. Somebody already did think of the aliens, didn't they? Never mind. Actually, the idea of using video games for instructional purposes is neither new nor without some merit. Many kids these days are oriented toward them and if the game also teaches, it can be useful in making the student retain what they have learned. This one sounds like it could be fun while teaching, too:

With help from students in Morales' computer graphics technology game and simulation development class they devised the game in which the main character travels through seven rooms to battle the evil forces trying to destroy the planet.

In each room there is a chemistry-based challenge that the student must perform to go to the next level. If all the challenges are met a nuclear reactor is blown up and the planet is saved.

Morales once worked as a game developer for the Xbox.

Rampaging Rodents

The Miami International Airport is under siege by the rodent legions of the Animal Uprising™. Passengers are reporting seeing rats and mice running about the airport concourses.

MIAMI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, Fla. (WSVN) — Airport officials say they are working to resolve a major rodent problem at Miami International Airport. They say a multimillion-dollar construction project has set rats and mice loose in the terminals.

Passengers at MIA have already witnessed the hairy, disease-carrying vermin scurrying around the airport and rank them as one of the top customer service complaints. At least four passengers have written letters to the airport's complaint department over the last 14 months, the most recent received on Feb. 27.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are being told by one of our usually incoherent informants that the rodents are catching flights to various rodent vacation spots. Sumatra is reportedly a big destination.

Stark, Raving Mad

Of all the "solutions" being offered up to curb greenhouse gas emissions, this one takes the cake. This has crossed over into complete psychosis. The French speaking part of Belgium, the region known as Wallonia, has put a heavy tax on outdoor barbecues. If you want to grill that steak, you'd better cough up 20 euros per cookout. This is insane enough as it is, but here's where it really crosses into stark, raving madness: The authorities will monitor compliance using helicopters and thermal imaging equipment. No,really.

Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2, a so-called greenhouse gas, is emitted during barbequing. Beginning June 2007, residents of Wallonia will have to pay 20 euros for a grilling session.

The local authorities plan to monitor compliance with the new tax legislation from helicopters, whose thermal sensors will detect burning grills.

So to stop 50-100 grams of CO2, they will use helicopters emitting thousands of pounds of CO2. Now you know why they call residents of that region "Walloons". They're wallunatics.

UPDATE: A commenter - who's comment got deleted for several comment policy violations - said this is an April Folls Joke. Which may or may not be true, but the story linked is datelined April 3.

UPDATE: Quilly Mammoth found the original - which was, indeed, dated April 1st. Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug. My apologies.

Mammals Mauling Missouri Motorists

The Animal Uprising™ has launched a spring offensive in Missouri. They are sending their suicide swerve squads out in force. These are the animals, primarily deer, that jump in front of cars in an attempt to make the driver swerve, lose control and crash. But the Missouri offensive is not just using deer. They are using cows, too.

The 1996 GMC reportedly struck a fence after missing the animal, went into a field and overturned. The crash was reported around 8:40 p.m. on Route E, four miles north of Eldridge.

Paramedics took Christopher D. Parson, 36, to Lake Ozark Hospital in Osage Beach with moderate injuries, a patrol report said.

The patrol also reported that an Oklahoma motorist was injured last night after his Toyota struck a cow in McDonald County.

The crash was reported before 8:30 p.m. on Missouri 43, one mile north of Southwest City.

Please note the county in which the cow-car crash occurred. Is this the opening round in an offensive against fast food as well? We think the selection of McDonald county as the location for this is not coincidental.

Serious Issues

I've posted a number of times on the so-called National Popular Vote Plan to try to bypass the constitution and the Electoral College it mandates. Obviously, I do not approve of the idea or the way it is trying an end-around on the Constitution of the United States. Supporters of a popular vote for the presidential election have tried - and failed - to do it the right way in the past. That is by trying to get an amendment to the Constitution through Congress. The wrong way, I think, is to try to forge a compact between the states in defiance of the prohibition on that that is in the Constitution. David Broder sees the problems in this approach as well.

The scheme, invented by John R. Koza, a Stanford professor, relies on the provision of the Constitution giving legislatures the power to "appoint" their presidential electors. If legislatures in enough states to make up a majority of the electoral college — 270 electoral votes — pledge to commit those votes to the candidate winning the national popular vote, no constitutional amendment is needed. Bayh and other high-minded individuals, such as former Illinois Republican representative John B. Anderson, a one-time independent presidential candidate, support the plan, arguing that it is a perfect expression of 21st-century democracy, while the electoral college is a relic of 18th-century thought.

All votes should count equally, no matter where they are cast, they say. Bayh told the Maryland legislators that Baltimore and Indianapolis voters are ignored by the presidential candidates because they live in states where one party dominates (Republicans in Indiana; Democrats in Maryland), while small-town voters in Ohio and Wisconsin are flooded with attention simply because their states are closely contested.

What is worse, they say, the electoral college made George W. Bush the winner in 2000 although Al Gore got half a million more votes, and such a result could happen again. Those arguments have persuaded a wide variety of others, including the New York Times editorial page and columnist E.J. Dionne Jr., to sign on to the plan.

The sincerity and stubborn persistence of Bayh and the others notwithstanding, this is a questionable proposition. No one knows what the abandonment of a federal principle — voting by state for the highest officer in the land — would mean for American politics and government.

I do not believe the measure will get past the Supreme Court, regardless of what its supporters say. But that is a separate issue. There are a lot more issues about this initiative that are not being fully explored, as Broder points out. The absolute nightmare of a national recount in a close election is one of them. So is the complete abandonment of the smaller states that will happen. Candidates will not campaign in all the states, as supporters say they will. They will only concentrate on the largest, vote-rich areas. The smaller states will become voiceless in the process.

Surging To Defeat

Daniel Henninger of the Opinion Journal has his weekly column out. In it, he details the tale of two surges. The troop surge in Iraq and the surge the Democrats are orchestrating toward defeat in that war. He points out something that appears to have escaped the notice of the Democratic leadership. If they bet wrong, they are in serious, serious trouble. (I've been pointing that out all along.)

Carried aloft on the gassy fumes of politics, the congressional Democrats may be overshooting on Iraq. Six months from now, they may wish they had been more temperate. Helped finally by the right U.S. military strategy, the Iraq nightmare might be ebbing. Then what?

No such thought intrudes today on Democratic politics. Buoyed by President Bush's 30-something approval and with disaffection over the war at 60%, Senate Majority Leader Reid can promise to sign on to Russ Feingold's pull-the-plug bill; and House Speaker Pelosi, as if making foie gras, can cram an Iraq-withdrawal bill down the gullets of her chamber's membership. The polls are with Harry and Nancy. What can go wrong?

What could go wrong is that the U.S. military's "surge" could go right. The surge, led by Gen. David Petraeus and formally known as the Baghdad Security Plan, is a real strategy being executed by real people on the ground in Iraq. For the past several months, since President Bush announced the plan, the Democratic leadership has acted as if this effort were so irrelevant as to not exist. Why bother? The House leadership has its own "surge" up and running in Washington against the enemy in the White House.

The Democrats are betting everything on a defeat. I honestly do not believe the American voters gave them a mandate to lose a war. But they are pressing ahead, ignoring all the things they promised to get elected in the first place. The voters will remember that when the next election rolls around. And if the surge in Iraq does start to turn things around enough that the media can no longer ignore it (as ABC News is already reporting) then the defeat the Democrats are surging toward may well be their own. Surprisingly, Barack Obama was the first Democrat to talk a bit of sense about funding the troops - he was promptly savaged by Kos and Kompany for doing so. He may end up as one of the few to benefit if the current Democratic surge turns into a disaster for the party. (And the fact that the major media is turning on Nancy Pelosi is an indication that this may be turning into that disaster very rapidly.)

The Rise And (Prat)Fall Of Nancy Pelosi

I warned that the media was sending a serious warning to the Democratic leadership in Congress that they were rapidly running out of media cover. All the signs were there when two major newspapers published editorials critical of the way the supplemental spending bill was being handled. Nancy Pelosi refused to pay attention to the warning signs, however. And today the Washington Post unleashed a broadside at her over her "pratfall in Damascus" - their exact words.

HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad. After a meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, Ms. Pelosi announced that she had delivered a message from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that "Israel was ready to engage in peace talks" with Syria. What's more, she added, Mr. Assad was ready to "resume the peace process" as well. Having announced this seeming diplomatic breakthrough, Ms. Pelosi suggested that her Kissingerian shuttle diplomacy was just getting started. "We expressed our interest in using our good offices in promoting peace between Israel and Syria," she said.

Only one problem: The Israeli prime minister entrusted Ms. Pelosi with no such message. "What was communicated to the U.S. House Speaker does not contain any change in the policies of Israel," said a statement quickly issued by the prime minister's office. In fact, Mr. Olmert told Ms. Pelosi that "a number of Senate and House members who recently visited Damascus received the impression that despite the declarations of Bashar Assad, there is no change in the position of his country regarding a possible peace process with Israel." In other words, Ms. Pelosi not only misrepresented Israel's position but was virtually alone in failing to discern that Mr. Assad's words were mere propaganda.

This kind of slam is not usually directed at Democrats these days by the major media. But while the media may be overwhelmingly in favor of Democrats, they appear to be more in favor of the more centrist politicians, not the left wing extremists. And Pelosi and company no longer have cover. They are about to find that out, I suspect. This latest, extremely badly thought out and executed trip has likely undone most, if not all, of Pelosi's positive press in the near term. Incidentally, the quoted section of the editorial is the mild part. It actually becomes much more harsh.