A Little (Sunday) Night Music

Back in the day, one of my favorite albums (which I still own) was by a duo called Aztec Two-Step. (They took their name from a  line in a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, A Coney Island of the Mind.) My sister once got me tickets to one of their appearances when they played in Rochester, New York. She knew I was a big fan. Rex Fowler and Neal Shulman are still recording and touring, all these years later. I came across this video on YouTube of them doing one of my favorites from that first vinyl LP I bought all those years ago. Ladies and gentlemen, Aztec Two-Step, performing Killing Me, live:

The Filth Of Forth

The British media is all abuzz with the breathless reporting about a discharge of raw sewage into the Firth of Forth. For those who are unfamiliar with the nomenclature, the firth is the estuary of the river Forth. (The English version of English has a few differences from the American.) Every news outlet has a variation on the above linked story, this one is from the Telegraph.

Engineers were last night working to halt one of Scotland's worst environmental disasters, after millions of litres of raw sewage ran into the Firth of Forth.

Local people were being warned not to enter the water or pick up fish from the shore as much of Edinburgh's waste flowed untreated into the estuary for the third day.

The spill began on Friday after a mechanical failure at the Seafield treatment plant in the Leith area of the city.

At one point over the weekend, one thousand litres of untreated waste were leaking from the plant every second.

Last night, Jack McConnell, Scotland's First Minister, called for an urgent inquiry into the disaster.

Opposition parties claimed that Seafield plant needed extra investment and questioned if such an important facility should have been built and maintained under the controversial private finance initiative. Edinburgh council gave a warning that the high levels of raw sewage released into the water could be a health risk to both humans and animals.

Gordon Greenhill, head of community safety at Edinburgh City Council, said: "Raw sewage obviously has E.coli and the implications for the young and elderly are always there."

I'll just point out that until the modern sewage treatment facilities were built, the dumping of completely raw sewage was routine. Is this bad? Yes. Is it the end of the world as we know it? Not hardly. It needs to be fixed, but pumps break - that would be a fact of life. (Incidentally, the sewage is not entirely raw, according to another story. That report stated that the sewage has been partially treated with most of the solids removed.) As disgusting as the effluent is, the political posturing that follows is probably even more toxic. Mechanical systems do actually break from time to time. There is an old engineering adage. Fast, cheap or good; you can pick any two. Government bidding processes are set up to almost always pick the first two.

A Modest Proposal

Hat tip to LGF for this item. The Pittsburgh Review-Tribune carried this story about a lecture by Ayaan Hirsi Ali in which a local Pittsburgh imam cheerfully announced that Hirsi Ali should be put to death for her comments.

A community debate over religious freedom surfaced in Western Pennsylvania last week when Dutch feminist author Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali refugee who has lived under the threat of death for denouncing her Muslim upbringing, made an appearance at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown.

Islamic leaders tried to block the lecture, which was sponsored through an endowment from the Frank J. and Sylvia T. Pasquerilla Lecture Series. They argued that Hirsi Ali's attacks against the Muslim faith in her book, "Infidel," and movie, "Submission," are "poisonous and unjustified" and create dissension in their community.

Although university officials listened to Islamic leaders' concerns, the lecture planned last year took place Tuesday evening under tight security, with no incidents.

Imam Fouad ElBayly, president of the Johnstown Islamic Center, was among those who objected to Hirsi Ali's appearance.

"She has been identified as one who has defamed the faith. If you come into the faith, you must abide by the laws, and when you decide to defame it deliberately, the sentence is death," said ElBayly, who came to the U.S. from Egypt in 1976.

This is not a religious debate. This is a threat. This man, who has come to this country and taken advantage of the religious freedom it mandates, wants to deny it to another. He also wants the person he disagrees with dead. I have a modest proposal. Eject this man from this country - at once. This is not freedom of speech - this is incitement to violence. And this is someone we do not need in this country. I happen to have been raised in the Lutheran faith. And I would be saying exactly the same thing about a Lutheran minister who called for the death of someone who decided to change faiths - or abandon the Lutheran faith altogether. Freedom of religion means just that.

The Coming Oppression

(T)Hugo Chavez is busily forming armed groups of his supporters - and only his supporters - and telling them to implement his vision of a socialist revolution. If you are a Chavez opponent, you are not allowed into the little clubs and you don't get the guns and grenades.

On Mr Chávez's order, 17,000 communal councils have now been set up across the country, and an estimated £1 billion earmarked to fund them. As the official slogan, "Build power from below", proclaims, their stated purpose is to promote grass-roots democracy and hand power directly to the people - in particular the urban poor who make up the bulk of his most fervent supporters.

But as well as grappling with the grim conditions in slums such as Catia, members of these voluntary groups will constitute a nationwide militia, schooled in Cuban-style tactics for both guerrilla warfare and counter-insurgency.

Gen Alberto Mueller, an advisor to Mr Chávez, told The Sunday Telegraph: "Some communal groups have already received military training. They'll train in their own neighbourhoods and will be equipped with any arms - guns, grenades, knifes - the community can provide. We have a right to defend ourselves, like the UK has, and be sure we'll do it."

The move has caused alarm among Mr Chávez's critics, who claim the groups will be used to repress internal dissent. They point out that, unlike Venezuela's military reservists, the communal councils come under Mr Chávez's direct control, including the appointments of their oversight committees and allocation of funding.

They are being created in tandem with plans to expand Venezuela's military reserve fivefold, from about 200,000 people to one million - a move Mr Chávez has introduced in the belief that his sworn foe America is planning some kind of military intervention.

Tensions with Washington and the West are likely to escalate further next month, when the Chávez government plans to begin taking control of the main European and American-owned oil fields in Venezuela - a move ordered by presidential decree in February.

Those with the means to do so will be rushing to escape what is about to happen to Venezuela. Because these groups of armed Chavistas will shortly begin enforcing Chavez's decrees at gunpoint. Chavez's neighbors better start worrying, too. That big an army is meant to be used.

Sarkozy-Royal Matchup?

The Telegraph is citing exit poll results that appear to show that Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal will be the two contenders for the office of president of France. These are only exit poll results, however, so that is subject to change if they prove unreliable.

While the final running order was still unclear, there was little doubt that the two other top contenders, François Bayrou, the centrist leader of the UDF party, and far-Right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, were no longer in contention. A CSA poll gave Mr Bayrou from 16-20 per cent and Mr Le Pen from 11-16 per cent.

At a projected 87 per cent, voter turnout was the highest in the history of the Fifth French republic, smashing the previous record of 84 per cent in 1965 for the election of Charles de Gaulle.

The sky high figure reflected France’s renewed passion for politics after a gripping campaign to usher in a new generation of political leaders at a time when France is wracked with doubts over its future.

It also appeared to be the result of publicity campaigns telling people to vote. The result heralds the promise of a true showdown between an uninhibited Right, offering relatively liberal reforms, and an emphasis on work and meritocracy, and a Left offering a real change in leadership style while seeking to preserve at all costs the generous “French social model.”

This is really the expected outcome; pretty much everyone predicted these two would be the finalists in the process. Now it will come down to who can woo the supporters of the failed candidates more, especially if the actual voting results are very close between Sarkozy and Royal.

An Unrealistic Reality

Mark Steyn takes a hard look at the unrealistic reality that far too many people exist in in this country and in much of the world. He notes the banning of realistic prop weapons at Yale and the subsequent introduction of Trachtenberg night specials in their place.

I think we have a problem in our culture not with "realistic weapons" but with being realistic about reality. After all, we already "fear guns," at least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we ban them from so many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a "gun-free zone," formally and proudly designated as such by the college administration. Yet the killer kept his guns and ammo on the campus. It was a "gun-free zone" except for those belonging to the guy who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second Amendment not been in effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to do as two students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles, grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.

But you can't do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has created a "Gun-Free School Zone." Or, to be more accurate, they've created a sign that says "Gun-Free School Zone." And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The "gun-free zone" turned out to be a fraud — not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.

I live in northern New England, which has a very low crime rate, in part because it has a high rate of gun ownership. We do have the occasional murder, however. A few years back, a couple of alienated loser teens from a small Vermont town decided they were going to kill somebody, steal his ATM cards, and go to Australia. So they went to a remote house in the woods a couple of towns away, knocked on the door, and said their car had broken down. The guy thought their story smelled funny so he picked up his Glock and told 'em to get lost. So they concocted a better story, and pretended to be students doing an environmental survey. Unfortunately, the next old coot in the woods was sick of environmentalists and chased 'em away. Eventually they figured they could spend months knocking on doors in rural Vermont and New Hampshire and seeing nothing for their pains but cranky guys in plaid leveling both barrels through the screen door. So even these idiots worked it out: Where's the nearest place around here where you're most likely to encounter gullible defenseless types who have foresworn all means of resistance? Answer: Dartmouth College. So they drove over the Connecticut River, rang the doorbell, and brutally murdered a couple of well-meaning liberal professors. Two depraved misfits of crushing stupidity (to judge from their diaries) had nevertheless identified precisely the easiest murder victims in the twin-state area. To promote vulnerability as a moral virtue is not merely foolish. Like the new Yale props department policy, it signals to everyone that you're not in the real world.

And that is the reality that so many refuse to acknowledge. There are monsters in the world but there are fewer and fewer grown-ups making decisions to deal with them. Instead, props are banned as being too realistic. Vulnerability is promoted as virtue. Gun free zones are declared as if wishing it makes reality. Victims are purposely deprived of any means of defense, ensuring a ready supply of victims for the monsters. The reality is that the monsters know who to look for, where they have the best chance at getting victims and subsequent media coverage.

Harry Reid And The Floppy Red Shoes

This is one for the archives. The Las Vegas Review-Journal, Harry Reid's hometown paper, is calling Harry Reid a clown for his inept, irresponsible behavior and statements. They are scathing in this editorial.

The Democratic strategy to use the ongoing violence in Iraq to their political advantage in the run-up to the 2008 elections requires some skill and nuance. But it's growing harder to believe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid — Nevada's own — actually possesses those skills.

The Democratic strategy is anything but straightforward.

Sen. Reid and his colleagues know there is much political hay to be made by criticizing President Bush's planning and conduct of the post-war occupation. But they also know that while "cut our losses and pull out" plays well in Democratic caucuses, it failed in the Connecticut general election in 2006, when Sen. Joseph Lieberman and his anti-surrender stance handily defeated end-the-war candidate Ned Lamont — even though Sen. Lieberman had to run as an independent to pull it off.

That's the kind of "poll" that really counts.

Thus, the Democrats' careful strategy requires them to appear to oppose Mr. Bush's ongoing occupation of Iraq (to please their pacifist base), without taking any concrete, "binding" actions to change the status quo.

Enter Sen. Reid, flopping around in big red shoes like Bozo the Clown.

A few weeks ago, Sen. Reid said on a major weekend talk show that he favored a firm deadline for withdrawal of all forces from Iraq. When members of his own caucus said, "What? First we've heard," the senator went into damage control mode — the kind that starts out with staffers explaining, "What the senator meant to say was …"

But last week he was back at it. As the Democratic House voted 215-199 Thursday to uphold legislation ordering troops out of Iraq next year, Sen. Reid appeared in public to declare the war in Iraq is "lost."

I have pointed out - repeatedly - that the American voters did not give the Democrats a mandate to lose a war. But the leadership of Reid and Pelosi have focused on that to the exclusion of all of the rest of the reasons they were elected. This latest ineptitude from Reid will come back to haunt the Democrats in 2008 when the voters have to decide who to trust with national security. By acting to demoralize our troops while emboldening the enemies of this nation, Harry has gone a long way toward letting the voters know who can't be trusted.

The clown shoes will not help.

Alligator Invasion Continues

Authorities in Huntinton, New York have captured one of the scouts for the invasion by the reptile legions of the Animal Uprising™. That's right, they are already on Long Island. They're moving fast this year.

It was a startling sight on Saturday in a community just 35 miles from Manhattan. The American alligator is native to the South and it is against New York law to own one, said Ray Gross, chief of the Suffolk County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Green with yellowish stripes and roughly 2 feet long, the animal appeared to be about 3 years old, Gross said.

County police helped capture the alligator, which "wasn't too happy to see us," said Officer Vinny O'Shaughnessy.

"We were incredulous at first, but then we knew that we had to do something about it," he said.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard feel that it is our civic duty to remind people of the tricks the alligators routinely use to capture unsuspecting suburbanites. They have been known to bait traps with newspapers. This is a particularly effective technique that they have used repeatedly. They have also disguised themselves as doormats, gift wrapped themselves at Christmas, pretended to be luggage and even been known to camouflage themselves as golf balls. The best defense being a good offense, we strongly recommend carrying a large baseball bat and whacking your doormats, luggage and anything else of a suspicious nature prior to use to ensure there are no hidden gators. Encourage your neighbors to do the same. Maybe your neighbors will still talk to you after you do, ours have been standoffish lately for some reason. We suspect they are a bit overawed by our obvious expertise in these matters.

Secret Gore

According to a story in the Telegraph, a secret team of political operatives is being lined up to prepare for a run by Al Gore for the Democratic nomination in 2008. The people involved say that Gore has not officially asked them to do this, but also that he has not told them to stop, either.

Friends of Al Gore have secretly started assembling a campaign team in preparation for the former American vice-president to make a fresh bid for the White House.

Two members of Mr Gore's staff from his unsuccessful attempt in 2000 say they have been approached to see if they would be available to work with him again.

Mr Gore, President Bill Clinton's deputy, has said he wants to concentrate on publicising the need to combat climate change, a case made in his film, An Inconvenient Truth, which won him an Oscar this year.

But, aware that he may step into the wide open race for the White House, former strategists are sounding out a shadow team that could run his campaign at short notice. In approaching former campaign staff, including political strategists and communications officials, they are making clear they are not acting on formal instructions from Mr Gore, 59, but have not been asked to stop.

His denials of interest in the presidency have been couched in terms of "no plans" or "no intention" - politically ambiguous language that does not rule out a run.

One of his former campaign team said: "I was asked whether I would be available towards the end of the year if I am needed. They know he has not ruled out running and if he decides to jump in, he will have to move very fast.

I think Al Gore is unlikely to win if he enters the race, but it sure would torpedo the aspirations of some of the other candidates. Gore is, whether his ardent supporters care to admit it or not, carrying a lot of negative baggage. It would actually be quite easy for the Republican nominee to hammer Gore with all of that. I don't honestly believe that Gore will jump in unless one of the other candidates self-destructs. Then all bets are off.