Ahem

Fascist America in 10 easy steps . That is the title of a breathless story (or fairy tale) in the Guardian written by Naomi Wolf. Oh, do take the time to read it, what follows will make much more sense if you wade about in the fever swamp for a moment. But Naomi did present a little blueprint that fits something else that is going on in the world. Therefore, we here in the Crabitat have decided to reinterpret the list Ms. Wolf so graciously projected:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy

Global warming! Global warming! We're all going to die.

2. Create a gulag

Demand the ouster of people who do not accept the "consensus" about global warming from their jobs. (Prison to follow.)

3. Develop a thug caste

Send in the screeching hordes to shout down anyone who disagrees with global warming "consensus."

4. Set up an internal surveillance system

Set up "global warming deniers database ." (If we weren't before, we expect to be on it shortly).

5. Harass citizens' groups

See 3.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release

So far, only refusing to allow publication of opinions that disagree with "consensus" in scientific journals and threatening letters from US Senators - give it time.

7. Target key individuals

Expect to be reviled and accused of being a tool of the oil companies if you dare to speak out against the "consensus."

8. Control the press

The New York Times. Case closed.

9. Dissent equals treason

See 4.

10. Suspend the rule of law

Give them a chance at power and the full set will be complete.

Amazing how that works, isn't it?

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone who has linked to this. Visitors, please do take a look around. (You might be interested in the letter we found.)

Can’t Be Bothered

It seems that while Harry Reid has publicly announced he won't believe any reports of any progress in Iraq from the commander Reid voted to send to Iraq, Nancy Pelosi is taking it one step further. She won't even bother to attend the briefing general Petraeus is giving tomorrow on the hill. 

WASHINGTON, Apr. 24, 2007— As the House and Senate prepare to vote this week on the final conference report on the $124 billion troop funding bill — which would also mandate that U.S. combat troops begin withdrawing from Iraq on Oct. 1 at the latest — Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to come to the Hill tomorrow to brief lawmakers on the progress of the recent troop escalation.

ABC News has learned, however, that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., will not attend the briefing.

"She can't make the briefing tomorrow," a Democratic aide told ABC News Tuesday evening. "But she spoke with the general via phone today at some length."

A Pelosi aide said the speaker on Tuesday requested a one-on-one meeting with Petraeus but that could not be worked out. He said their phone conversation lasted 30 minutes.

Last week, House Democratic leaders were criticized by their Republican counterparts when they initially declined an invitation from Petraeus to brief House members on the status of the war due to "scheduling conflicts."

Apparently sorting a sock drawer or pretty much anything else is more important than actually attending a briefing. It's very nice she took the time to talk to the general by phone, but actually being in the loop at a classified briefing - which will undoubtedly include visuals - is kind of important to actually governing. As opposed to simply opposing. But I guess we see where the priorities are, don't we? All the time in the world for a thuggish enemy of the United States in Syria, no time for the commander of fellow American citizens. 

Seriously, the Democratic party will come to revile Nancy Pelosi in the very near future. Do you really think the voters are not paying any attention? 

Night Deposit

So, a man walks into a bank lobby to use the ATM. There, he comes face to face with a horse . (Sounds like the setup for a joke, doesn't it?) Only, it happened in Germany. Ok, that sounds even more like the setup for a joke.

The 40-year-old machinist told Bild newspaper he had had "a few beers" with a friend in Wiesenburg, southwest of Berlin, and decided to hit the hay in the bank on his way home.

"It was late, it was already dark and cold," he was quoted as saying.

Confronted with the lack of a hitching-post, he brought the 6-year-old horse, named Sammy, in along with him.

When a customer came across the horse and sleeping rider in the bank at 4:15 a.m. Monday, he called police, who then came and woke the owner up and sent him on his way.

No charges were filed, but there might be some cleanup needed: Apparently Sammy made his own after-hours deposit on the carpet.

Faithful readers will realize that the horse was up to no good. Our informants* tell us that the horse is one Hans "Trigger" Zwayback, an expert computer hacker for the Animal Uprising™. He was hacking into the bank's account information. The "deposit" was just a distraction so the authorities wouldn't notice the "withdrawals".

* In light of the last bit of information provided by our informants, we'd like to announce that we have a few openings for informants. It's getting far too expense to keep bailing the old ones out of the drunk tank. Or, as we understand it is known in Germany, das Tanken.

The Mystery Of The Open Grave

It was a dark and stormy night - no wait, that's been done. It was the best of times - nah, too trite. Ok, someone is putting nice, neat packages of smoked fish along with people's photos in freshly dug graves in Yonkers, New York.

A gravedigger noticed the four small, black bags Saturday in a grave he had recently prepared at St. Joseph's Cemetery. Each bag contained one smoked fish and pictures of unidentified people, police said.

It was not clear when the bags were placed there, police said. They said they did not believe the items were linked to the family of the person being buried.

The finding did not interfere with the burial, said cemetery superintendent Frank Dietrich. He had his own explanation for the items: "Littering."

Excuse us, we have to give Uncle Guido a call and see what, exactly, he was doing in Yonkers over the weekend. Thank heavens he didn't have any coconuts this time. Or the other stuff. 

Have We Got A Deal For You!

A mad mama cow went on a rampage through the crowded and busy streets of Hanover, Germany. The riot went on for more than three hours as police, firemen, the cow's owner and pretty much everybody else chased the creature around the city. The rampage was not cheap, either.

Uschi escaped from a farm late Monday and became increasingly violent as she encountered shocked drivers and pedestrians in the city.

Pursued by the farmer, television camera crews and 30 police and fire fighters, the Charolais cow lashed out at cars, benches, garden fences and whatever else got in her way during the 5-km chase, authorities said.

After more than three hours on the loose, Uschi was brought down by tranquilizer darts, without harming her unborn calf, fire services spokesman Martin Argendorf said Tuesday.

"She probably won't remember any of it when she wakes up again. But the farmer will, because he's going to have to pay damages of about 25,000 euros," he said.

Note to farmer and police: These cost less than a buck each. Oh sure, they call them deer slugs, but they will work on cows. Let us know if you're interested, we can put you in touch with the folks who sell these. 

Corzine Out Of Intensive Care

New Jersey governor Jon Corzine is out of intensive care at last. His condition has been upgraded to stable but he will not be able to resume his duties for a while longer. 

Doctors upgraded Gov. Corzine's condition yesterday to stable and moved him out of the intensive-care unit as he recuperates from an April 12 accident.

But Corzine will remain hospitalized for at least another week, and will not resume his job duties until sometime after he leaves the hospital, the doctors and the governor's chief of staff said at a news conference at Cooper University Hospital.

They said Corzine was joking, watching television, reading newspapers and talking with family and staff. He was eating solid food, including a cheeseburger and carrot cake, and drinking protein shakes (he prefers chocolate).

The governor has even asked about issues such as the state budget and a plan to sell or lease state assets. "He's not as grouchy as you would expect him to be," chief of staff Tom Shea said. "He's fairly even keeled."

Shea said he was startled to find Corzine sitting up in bed, his arms raised and his hands clasped behind his head. And the governor was "showing off" how he could bend his knee, "which was impressive," said Robert Ostrum, Cooper's director of orthopedic trauma.

But Corzine gets tired easily, and doctors said that would continue. He remains on antibiotics and painkillers, and is coughing up sputum while recovering from 11 fractured ribs, a fractured left leg, collarbone, breastbone and other injuries.

When he returns to work will depend on his energy level, doctors said. "Because he can speak doesn't mean he's in a position to have an intense conversation about something," Shea said.

From the hints that are being dropped in the story, this may take a while. Everyone quoted appears to be saying that Corzine's injuries are going to keep him sidelined for some time.

Winnie The Boom

It's true. Winnie the Pooh has gone over to the terrorists. Just ask the police in Wright City, Missouri. They were called in to disarm Winnie.

WRIGHT CITY, Mo. (AP) — A man who went to a Missouri post office to pick up a novelty phone he ordered over the Internet was alarmed that the package was ticking; it subsequently created a bomb scare.

It turned out that the phone — shaped like Winnie the Pooh — had a feature the customer did not know about: An incoming call causes Winnie's head to spin, and the feature apparently had been activated during shipping.

The ticking that prompted evacuation of the Wright City post office Thursday morning was Winnie's head repeatedly hitting the side of the package, Missouri Highway Patrol spokeswoman Cpl. Julie Scerine said.

Police and members of the bomb squad were called when the man retrieving the package noticed the unexpected sound. Wright City is about 45 miles west of St. Louis.

We just want to know how he managed to mail himself. 

A Brief History Of Mental Health

Jonathan Kellerman, professor of psychology and best-selling author, provides a short history of mental health in the United States since the 1970s. In a nutshell, excuse the expression, it boils down to one thing: turn 'em loose on the streets. The rest, as they say, is history.

By the time I received my doctorate in 1974, the doors to many of the locked wards had been flung open and the much vaunted community mental health centers were being built–predominately in low-rent neighborhoods. A few years later, government funding for these allegedly humane treatment outposts had been cut, as yet more fiscal belt-tightening was inspired by findings that they didn't work.

Because crazy people rarely showed up for treatment voluntarily, and when they did, the treatment milieu consisted of queuing up interminably at Thorazine Kiosks.

And now we had a Homeless Problem.

And everyone was astonished.

Estimates vary but there's no doubt that a significant percentage of people living on heating vents, pushing their belongings in shopping carts, squatting in city parks and immersed in the squalor of tent cities suffer from severe mental disease. And their psychosis is often exacerbated by drug and alcohol abuse–what is, essentially, a regimen of self-medication that should make a Szaszian proud.

Many of these unfortunates end up as victims of violent crimes. A few become victimizers and when they do, watch out. For though it is true that schizophrenics are responsible for a proportionally lower rate of violent offenses than the general population (because many forms of the disease engender passivity and physical inactivity), when crazy people do act out the results are often horrific: bloody spree killings ignited by paranoid thinking and the angry urgings of internal voices.

Which brings us to outrages such as the Virginia Tech massacre.

Diagnosis from afar is the purview of talk-shows hosts and other charlatans, and I will not attempt to detail the psyche of the Virginia Tech slaughterer. But I will hazard that much of what has been reported about his pre-massacre behavior–prolonged periods of asocial mutism and withdrawal, irrational anger and hatred, bizarre writing and speech–is not at odds with the picture of a fulminating, serious mental disease. And his age falls squarely within the most common period when psychosis blossoms.

No one who knew him seems surprised by what he did. On the contrary, dorm chatter characterized him explicitly as a future school-shooter. One of his professors, the poet Nikki Giovanni, saw him as a disruptive bully and kicked him out of her class. Other teachers viewed him as disturbed and referred him for the ubiquitous "counseling"–an outcome that is ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness and akin to "treatment" for a patient with metastasized cancer.

But even that minimal care wasn't given. The shooter didn't want it and no one tried to force him to get it. While it's been reported that he was involuntarily committed to a "Behavioral Health Center" in December 2005, those reports also say he was released the very next morning. Even if the will to segregate an obvious menace had been in place, the legal mechanisms to provide even temporary "warehousing" were absent. The rest is terrible history.

That is not to say that anyone who pens violence-laden poetry or lets slip the occasional hostile remark should be protectively incarcerated. But when the level of threat rises to college freshmen and faculty prophesying accurately, perhaps we should err on the side of public safety rather than protect individual liberty at all costs.

Kellerman explains how much of this came about, why it became all the rage to "liberate" the mentally ill. It is worth taking the time to read. From personal experience in a related topic, I can attest that opening the doors to the state hospitals was a questionable idea at best. I have a brother who has Downs Syndrome. He was at a state hospital in New York for many years after several instances where my mother realized she could not control his violent outbursts. He did quite well at the hospital and regarded it as his home. When they started closing the hospitals, they sent him to a group home. A series of them, in fact. Because he has had repeated problems in those settings through the years and ends up getting transferred. Is he better off? I don't know that he is, really. 

Peristerophobia On Parade

Thank heavens! We finally have an explanation for peristerophobia! Thanks to the BBC for getting this vital information out to the public. Yes, at last you can come to grips with your irrational fear of pigeons. Because, you see, it is not irrational at all. You've been genetically programmed and the BBC found the guy with the goods on why you were. It isn't because the winged rats spread disease and leave a nasty mess wherever they go. It isn't because of the sky rat's evil plans to build cyborg pigeons. Nope, the real reason is even more entertaining. It was the giant birds!

Many people firmly believe street pigeons spread disease. But this belief is attacked by pigeon lovers, who say the threat has been exaggerated and there are no documented cases of a disease being transmitted from a pigeon to a human.

They are known to be susceptible to some diseases like tuberculosis, although no more so than any other bird species or wild animals. But the fact there are so many of them means people have good reason to raise the point, argue critics. There are millions.

We share the UK with an estimated 18 million feral pigeons and they can breed up to up to six times a year. They are one of the few birds recognised by the government as a nuisance pest and can be controlled using humane methods and with a licence.

The sheer scale of numbers has resulted in two other commonly cited criticisms - they damage property and drive out other bird species.

But the public's general dislike of pigeons also comes down to an inherited survival instinct. Our bodies are programmed to play it safe when it comes to some species, says Felix Economakis, psychologist and hypnotherapist in BBC Three's Panic Room.

"A dislike of any bird is an evolutionary survival instinct that has been passed down through our DNA. Back in cavemen times birds were bigger and posed a real danger.

This fits in perfectly with what great uncle Otto told us when we were children, back before they took him to the home. He said that one of our ancestors was carried off by an enormous woolly mammoth wren, or possibly a saber-toothed sparrow. All he knew is it had feathers and an attitude. So now you know the real reason you enjoy poisoning pigeons in the park.