Think This Is Bad?

The results from an AP-Ipsos poll are being pimped as a disastrous outlook by Americans on life, the world and everything. By the AP, of course.

Only 25 percent of those surveyed say things in the U.S. are going in the right direction, according to an AP-Ipsos poll this month. That is about the lowest level of satisfaction detected since the survey started in December 2003.

Rarely have longer-running polls found such a rate since the even gloomier days of 1992 ahead of the first President Bush's re-election loss to Democrat Bill Clinton.

The current glumness is widely blamed on public discontent with the war in Iraq and with President Bush. It is striking for how widespread the mood is among different groups of people.

Women and minorities are less content than men and whites, which has been true for years. But all four groups are at or near record lows for the AP-Ipsos poll, and at unusually low levels for older surveys, as well.

But if you think this is bad right now, just wait.

Wait until gasoline prices double, then double again, then double again due to agitation over global warming. Cheerfully pimped by the media.

Wait until jobs, union blue-collar and white-collar jobs, are really gone for good - due to global warming hysteria pimped by an out-of-(self) control media and the insane prices of energy in the US.

Wait until an America devastated in the global community by the stupid inanities of internal partisan politics is relegated to third class status in the world. Cheered on by the American media.

Think it's bad now?

(Note to American journalists: Think you'll still have jobs when the country that gave you the freedom to tear her down is no longer capable of doing so? Then you're really. really not very bright.)

Is It Just Us?

Or does something sound weird about this story?

JAKARTA, Indonesia - An Indonesian fisherman hooked a rare coelacanth, a species once thought as extinct as dinosaurs, and briefly kept the "living fossil" alive in a quarantined pool.

Justinus Lahama caught the four-foot, 110-pound fish early Saturday off Sulawesi island near Bunaken National Marine Park, which has some of the highest marine biodiversity in the world.

The fish died 17 hours later, an extraordinary survival time, marine biologist Lucky Lumingas said Sunday.

"The fish should have died within two hours because this species only lives in deep, cold-sea environment," he said. Lumingas works at the local Sam Ratulangi University, which plans to study the carcass.

The coelacanth (pronounced SEE-la-kanth) was believed to be extinct for 65 million years until one was found in 1938 off Africa's coast, igniting worldwide interest. Several other specimens have since been discovered, including another off Sulawesi island in 1998.

Do the names seem odd to you? Justinus? Lucky? In Indonesia? Bad reporting? Bad editing? Descendants of Roman gamblers or mob bosses in Indonesia? We simply report, you decide on this weighty matter.

Old (Un)Reliable

Well, I've got my "big" computer back in the fray now. I had a power supply problem (the second one for this particular box) that initially drove me nuts. I could not figure out what was happening at first. It would suddenly go into a black screen crash - not a blue screen - we're talking a reboot. I just replaced the power supply (with a temporary one, a leftover from a rebuild of my son's computer.) The power supply is very small by today's standards (250W) but is originally from a Dell. They seem to have very, very reliable power supplies. My old Dell Optiplex GX1 (running Ubuntu now) is very elderly now and still has a rock solid power supply after all these years.

This computer was basically on - all the time - for more than two years after the initial power supply failure (which happened less than a month after I built it). So it's nice to have it back in the game, so to speak. It really has been a relatively reliable box as these things go. But my old GX1 is also proving very reliable running Ubuntu - it is running right now, in fact, connected through a KVM switch with this computer. It's a good thing having a backup.

Yeah, that was overly geeky, wasn't it? Hey, I'm a hardware kind of guy.

Red Flag

Despite all the inevitable gushing praise bound to projectively vomit forth from the left over the new Michael Moore self-aggrandizing film Sicko, one should really first temper their reactions by reading what Canadian journalists are saying. Because Moore is, yet again, playing fast and loose with the facts and the Canadians are throwing the flag on him. Which makes Moore whine.

Michael Moore is handing out fake bandages to promote his new film Sicko, an exposé of the failings of the U.S. health care system.

But he may feel like applying a couple to himself after the mauling he received yesterday from several Canadian journalists – present company included – following the film's first viewing at the Cannes Film Festival.

"You Canadians! You used to be so funny!" an exasperated Moore said at a press conference in the Palais des Festivals.

"You gave us all our best comedians. When did you turn so dark?"

We Canucks were taking issue with the large liberties Sicko takes with the facts, with its lavish praise for Canada's government-funded medicare system compared with America's for-profit alternative.

While justifiably demonstrating the evils of an American system where dollars are the major determinant of the quality of medicare care a person receives, and where restoring a severed finger could cost an American $60,000 compared to nothing at all for a Canadian, Sicko makes it seem as if Canada's socialized medicine is flawless and that Canadians are satisfied with the status quo.

Moore makes the eyebrow-raising assertion that Canadians live on average three years longer than Americans because of their superior health care system.

I suggested to Moore that Sicko makes Canada's health system look so great, it wouldn't be surprising if Prime Minister Stephen Harper – of whom Moore is no fan – handed out DVD copies of it as campaign material in a future election.

Other Canadian journalists spoke of the long wait times Canadians face for health care, much longer than the few minutes Moore suggests in Sicko. Moore, who has come under considerable fire for factual inaccuracies in his films, parried back with more questionable claims.

"You're in a longer line than we're in because you get to live three years longer than we do. Why is that?" Moore said. "Why is it that a baby born in Toronto has a better chance of making it to its first birthday than a baby born in Detroit?"

Moore later back-pedalled on some of his praise, saying neither Harper nor regular Canadians should pat themselves on the back too much.

"It's not hard to do better than the U.S.," Moore cautioned. "The Canadian system, if you look on that list of the World Health Organization, is not that far above us. It's not like the French system. The French system is the best in the world."

Ah, but Moore also praises the British system - which is in imminent danger of collapse under its own weight and incompetence. And the vaunted French system has bankrupted the country, led to massive unemployment and still fails to provide the best and latest anti-cancer drugs to its citizens - according to a Swedish study. The best country for getting that advanced treatment?

The United States.

So you can get your medical facts from actual doctors and experts or you can get "facts" from a factually-challenged filmmaker who had better pray his advanced girth doesn't necessitate immediate health care anywhere in the world. (Yeah, that was a cheap shot, sorry, Moore deserves it).

Dang

My wife, who has a great eye for value (well, except for marrying me, thank heavens), found a fabulous deal on a four day cruise to the Bahamas. Literally cheaper than a couple of nights in a really top level hotel and the food is included. (Don't be real impressed, there will be four of us in a shoe box-sized inner room - but we really don't plan on being in there a lot other than to sleep.) We're heading off tomorrow (blogging will be light since we'll be in transit and will be fairly spotty for the week, although I do intend to make time in the mornings for sure to get on here and keep abreast of things - the ship has internet). But my wife just walked in the office and said, "We haven't checked the weather, have we?" Which is a hint that is in all ways equivalent to a command. So I did. Forecast for Nassau according to Accuweather: 

Well, it could be worse. The kids will get a kick out of it even if we never get off the ship. They already feel like big shots and their friends are very envious. (I don't think they told them about the accommodations, which include overhead bunks for the kids.) My wife and I have been on one other cruise, our belated honeymoon trip about three years after we married. We don't like to rush into things. That one was a 7-day Eastern Caribbean cruise. (It cost a lot (a real lot) more than the one the four of us are taking this week, incidentally. That is what competition does - it drives prices down).

They’re Coming

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are well known for our thoughtful and calm reporting on all things relating to animals and particularly the Animal Uprising™. So longtime readers will note that when we raise an alarm, it is a very serious thing. We are doing so today. Because Brood XIII is coming. Yes, the feared and long-dreaded arrival of the hell spawn of Brood XIII are about to emerge with their deafening racket, clamoring for your very soul.

The Brood XIII cicadas will emerge from the ground after 17 years between now and June 1st.

CHICAGO - Coming soon: Brood XIII. It sounds like a bad horror movie. But it's actually the name of the billions of cicadas expected to emerge this month in parts of the Midwest after spending 17 years underground.

The red-eyed, shrimp-sized, flying insects don't bite or sting. But they are known for mating calls that produce a din that can overpower ringing telephones, lawn mowers and power tools.

Brood XIII is expected across northern Illinois, and in parts of Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana. Cicadas live only about 30 days as adults, and their main goal is mating.

They don't harm humans, although they are clumsy and might fly into people. Birds, squirrels and pets, especially dogs, love to eat them, and they are high in protein.

"They're going to have quite a meal. It's going to be like Thanksgiving for them," said Tom Tiddens, supervisor for plant health care at the Chicago Botanic Garden.

They are periodical cicadas, which are only found in the eastern half of North America. The annual, or dog-day cicadas, that appear every summer are common around the world.

The last massive emergence of periodical cicadas was in 2004, when Brood X emerged after 17 years underground in parts of 15 Eastern states. Some broods emerge after 13 years.

The last time they emerged, in 1990, they crashed a wedding:

An Illinois company that provides ice sculptures has turned down several outdoor parties over the next month. That's because of what happened when Nadeau Ice Sculptures owner Jim Nadeau delivered a swan statue to a wedding in 1990, during the area's last emergence of the periodical cicadas.

"We put our tray down and immediately the cicadas came off the ground and attacked the ice. Literally, it was a moving sculpture, this big black ugly mass of cicadas constantly moving," said Nadeau.

"I don't want to talk myself out of work, but that was just too gross," he said.

They went for the swan thinking it was the bride, of course. They won't make that mistake again. June brides, you have been warned.

Being Honest

Longtime readers know I have a background in the Utility industry. I have never heard of Robert Murray before reading the profile in the Opinion Journal, however. I was never in the fuel-buying end of the business. But this man is worth listening to.

WASHINGTON–Every good party has its wet blanket. In the case of the energy industry's merrymaking for a global warming program, the guy in the dripping bedspread is a 67-year-old, straight-talking coal-mine owner by the name of Robert E. Murray.

You won't hear many of Mr. Murray's energy-biz colleagues mention him; they tend to avoid his name, much as nephews avoid talk of their crazy uncles. GE's Jeffrey Immelt, Duke Energy's Jim Rogers, Exelon's John Rowe–these polished titans have been basking in an intense media glow, ever since they claimed to have seen the light on global warming and gotten behind a mandatory government program to cut C02 emissions. They'd rather not have any killjoys blowing the whistle on their real motives–which is to make a pile of cash off the taxpayers and consumers who'll fund it.

And yet here's Mr. Murray, killjoy-in-chief at the global warming love-fest. "Some elitists in our country can't, or won't, tell fact from fiction, can't understand what a draconian climate change program will do [to] the dreams of millions of working Americans and those on fixed incomes," says the chairman and CEO of Murray Energy, one of the largest private coal concerns in the country. He's incensed by his fellow energy CEOs' "shameless" goal of fattening their bottom lines at the "expense of the broader economy." So these past months he's emerged from his quiet Cleveland office and jumped on the national stage, calling out the rest of his industry's CO2 collaborationists. He's testified in front of Congress; become a regular on television and radio programs; sat for profiles by journalists; and written letters to other energy companies exhorting them to think of the broader consequences.

He is very  concerned over what he is seeing right now, rightfully so. The economic consequences of all this hysteria will be devastating.

Had Mr. Costa bothered to stay, he'd have heard a useful, and irrefutable, analysis of just what today's legislative proposals for a global warming program would mean to the economy, including the nation's many miners. "Some 52% of this country's electricity is generated from coal," Mr. Murray says. "Global warming legislation would place arbitrary limits on the use of coal, yet there's nothing to replace it at the same cost. There's nuclear, but the environmentalists killed it off and aren't about to let it come back. There's hydro, but we're using that everywhere we can already. There's natural gas, but supply and pipeline capacity is limited, and it's three times the cost of coal. Politically correct–and subsidized 'alternative energy' is very limited in capability and also expensive.

"So what you are really doing with a global warming program is getting rid of low-cost energy," he says. The consequences? Americans have been fretting about losing jobs to places such as China or India, which already offer cheaper energy. "You hike the cost of energy here further, and you create a mass exodus of business out of this country." Especially so, given that neither of those countries is about to hamstring its own economy in order to join a Kyoto-like accord. He points out that since 1990, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 18%, while China's have increased by 77%. Mr. Murray also notes that many countries that have joined Kyoto have already failed to meet their targets.

Mr. Murray, like most honest participants in this debate, can reel off the names of the many respected scientists who still doubt that human activity is the cause of rising temperatures. But he tends to treat the scientific debate almost as a sideshow, an excuse for not talking about what comes next. "Even if the politicians believe 100% that man is causing global warming, they still have an obligation to discuss honestly just what damage they want to inflict on American jobs and workers and people on fixed incomes, in the here and now, with their programs."

Just take one small example. There is an enormous amount of noise right now over the idea of banning incandescent light bulbs. The idea is to change to the compact fluorescent. But examine the packaging for the new bulbs and note the country of origin. It will be China. American factories making incandescents will be shuttered and union production jobs will disappear. That is one tiny example, but it will get much, much worse as the US and the West box themselves into exorbitant energy prices while China, India and the rest of the world wallow in cheap energy. Coal miners - union workers all - will be out of work permanently. There is an economic train wreck being foisted on us.

Listen to Robert Murray.

Palestinians On Rampage

Not the one in Gaza, either. This one is in Lebanon. At least 19 people have died in fighting between Lebanese and a Palestinian group with ties to al Qaeda and Syrian intelligence.

At least 19 people were killed in fierce gunbattles in Lebanon today between soldiers and fighters from a shadowy Palestinian Islamic extremist group accused of having links to both al-Qaeda and the Syrian intelligence services.

Lebanese troops launched an assault on a building in Tripoli where militants from Fatah al-Islam were holed up after a morning of deadly shootouts in the northern port city and and a nearby Palestinian refugee camp. Nicholas Blanford, a Times correspondent on the spot, said that the militants in Tripoli had taken an elderly lady and her daughter hostage.

An army spokesman said 11 soldiers had lost their lives in the fighting, while a total of seven gunmen were reported killed along with a civilian who was caught in the crossfire when troops attacked the building in Tripoli.

Lebanon sent in troop reinforcements to contain the battles which erupted at dawn in Tripoli and around the nearby refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared, a Fatah al-Islam stronghold.

They're just partying down all over, aren't they? And still the Western governments refuse to condemn this behavior in meaningful terms. (Saying the occasional "tut-tut" while simultaneous blaming the entire situation on Israel does not discourage the Palestinians.)

Steyn On Illegal Immigration “Compromise”

Brilliant and scathing, Mark Steyn comments on what is known about the illegal immigration compromise that has been worked out in the US Senate. He calls it for exactly what it is, not a compromise but a capitulation.

Are you a fine upstanding member of the Undocumented-American community? That's to say, are you (if you'll forgive the expression) an illegal immigrant?

Great news! Being illegal is now perfectly legal! Just for being one of the circa 12 million people who shouldn't be here, you can now be here indefinitely! If you were living and working in America illegally before Jan. 1, 2007, you're now entitled to one of the new Z-1 "probationary" visas. And your parents and spouses are entitled to one of the new Z-2 visas, and your children to the new Z-3 visas.

Don't worry: It's not an "amnesty." Every politician in America is opposed to amnesty — if not the concept, then at least the word. That's why the visa starts with the letter that's furthest away from the one "amnesty" begins with. "Z" stands for zellout . . . no, hang on, zurrender or Zapatista, or some other word way up the other end of the alphabet from "amnesty." But the point is, at a stroke there will be no more illegal immigrants. Because being illegal means you're now legal.

Unless, of course, you came to America after Jan. 1, 2007, and thus aren't covered by the zamnesty. But in that case why not apply for the Z-1 anyway? After all, you're here illegally so how would U.S. Immigration know when you arrived? Especially with 12-15-20 million urgent applications tossed in on top of what's already a multi-year backlog. They're not exactly going to be doing a lot of in-depth background checks, especially not for a visa category whose only entry requirement under U.S. law is that you've broken U.S. law when you entered.

By the way, when I said "came to America," if you're visiting Toronto for a weekend break from Yemen or Belarus, don't be deterred by the fact that Canada is not technically in America. Why not just head down to Buffalo and apply for the old Z-1, too? After all, it's not such a stretch to regard every single person on the planet as a Z-1-in-waiting. This being America, pretty soon — a court decision here, a court decision there — the presumption of every school district and hospital and welfare administrator will be that they're obliged to treat everyone who walks in through the door as if they were a Z-1. You zee one, you've zeen 'em all.

After beating the heck out of the absurdities in this bill, Steyn gets very serious. The way this is being handled points to a serious structural weakness in our society:

At some point, it's worth trying to climb over the rubble of the 2007 Z-1s and the 1986 amnesty and the 1965 immigration act, and going back to basics: What is immigration for? In the modern Western world, to question immigration in even the most cautious way is to risk being demonized as a racist. Most of us like to see ourselves as nice people, and so even to raise the subject of immigration — even illegal immigration — feels like an assault not on distant foreigners so much as on our self-image. Yet, whatever the virtuousness of immigration for the host society, a dependence on it is a sign of profound structural weakness, and, when all the self-congratulation about celebrating diversity has died down, that weakness ought to be understood as such. The unspoken premise behind this bill is that the socioeconomic order in America is now so dependent on the vast apparatus of a giant shadow state of illegal immigrants that it cannot be dismantled but only legitimized and thereby expanded. If that is true, that is a basic structural defect that should be addressed honestly.

And that is precisely what this bill is not doing: addressing the issue honestly. That the political class in Washington is so tone deaf that they think they can slip this past an angry electorate shows just how out of touch they are. Polls repeatedly show that Americans want the border closed or at least made more secure first before anything else is done. The lip service that this bill makes to border security will not fool the public. There isn't enough lipstick in the world to dress this thing up.

Steyn is, of course, completely correct about the response anyone questioning illegal immigration gets. They are instantly visited by screeching comments calling them racist or worse. That is part of the left wing noise machine's tactic of intimidation. That the politicians in Washington are willing to cave into that kind of pressure is discouraging at best. I frankly think that any Senator up for reelection in 2008 who supports this monstrosity will be in trouble with the voters - regardless of party.

Eagle Eggnapping

The Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, Illinois was the scene of an eggnapping sometime between Thursday and Friday. One of two eggs laid by one of the zoo's eagles has gone missing. Officials think it was the raccoons, or maybe humans.

The discovery was made Friday afternoon at Miller Park Zoo in Bloomington, where attendance has been up since an eagle named Beauty laid eggs for the first time in her 13 years at the zoo.

No broken egg shells were found, zoo director John Tobias said, and both eggs appeared intact Thursday.

Beauty laid the eggs during a brief visit from a wild eagle that perched in trees over the enclosure for four days in late April. If the remaining egg is fertile, it could hatch around Memorial Day.

A captive male eagle named Mathata has been helping incubate the eggs. Neither eagle can fly because of injuries they suffered before their captivity.

Raccoons live nearby but haven't been spotted in the exhibit, Tobias said. His only other theory is that a human stole the egg.

Of course blaming the raccoons, just because they wear masks, steal and generally are well known troublemakers, is species profiling. Besides, we here at Blue Crab Boulevard know that the raccoons are innocent. It was the orangutans. They have been running a kidnapping for ransom ring for years.

Raining Rockets

Southern Israel is again under rocket attack from Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. More than 120 rockets have fallen in the last week. The West is turning a blind eye to the murderous thugs who are running Gaza, as usual. Hamas is getting all the weapons and explosives they can use yet Europe is silent about that fact.

In Jerusalem, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert threatened tougher action if the intensified rocket fire on Israeli border communities didn't cease.

The sixth straight day of airstrikes came as an uneasy truce between warring Palestinian factions set in. Masked Hamas and Fatah gunmen who had controlled the streets and taken over apartment buildings in the previous week scaled back their presence sharply, and residents who had holed up at home seeking refuge from the gunbattles ventured out to stock up on supplies at busy shops.

Children went back to school in time for final exams, and adults returned to work.

Four previous truces last week quickly collapsed, but Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said he expected the cease-fire deal reached Saturday to stick because of Israel's military action.

"No one would accept to fight one another while the Israelis are shelling Gaza," he said.

More than 50 Palestinians have been killed in fighting that broke out after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah stationed thousands of loyalist security forces on the streets of Gaza City without consulting Hamas, its partner in the Palestinian governing alliance.

The infighting has threatened the survival of the fragile national unity government, formed in March to end an earlier round of factional bloodshed.

Israel added an overlapping layer of violence by sending warplanes after Hamas rocket squads whose attacks on Israeli border towns have sown panic and sent thousands fleeing to safer ground.

Israel has carried out 21 airstrikes against Gaza since Tuesday, the army said, and at their weekly meeting on Sunday, Cabinet ministers discussed how to respond to the rocket barrages.

This article from Israel Insider gives a description of what it is like being under the rockets, including some video. The site appears to be down at the moment, however. If the West were to start holding the Palestinians accountable for this behavior instead of always seeking a way to blame it on Israel, there might be a chance to stop it. But until something changes, the terrorists will keep right on doing this. Maybe if a few more Western journalists were to witness the terror of the attacks they'd start coming down against Hamas.

Hometown Hero

Reading this op-ed from Liz Garrigan, editor of the Nashville Scene, in the Washington Post you get one solid impression: Fred Thompson would be able to do one thing Al Gore couldn't - carry Tennessee in a presidential election. It is kind of an odd piece, in that it sounds like Garrigan genuinely likes Fred Thompson yet she also presents a bit of mildly negative information about him - which she then promptly dismisses. All in all, I'd say this reads like a piece trying to dispose of any negative information right up front.

Like voters everywhere, we Tennesseans want our politicians to be part professor, part John Wayne. But the top-tier candidates in the GOP field so far — John McCain, Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney — somehow lack that magic merger of smarts and swagger, which is probably why nearly half of Republican voters say they're still waiting for the right candidate. Well, their John Wayne is standing just outside the corral.

He is Fred Dalton Thompson, and while he's no admiral, he has played one in the movies. The former senator is also the third man from our humble horizontal Southern state to be touted as presidential material in the past year, after former Senate majority leader Bill Frist and former vice president Al Gore. Thompson has yet to raise a nickel — or a presidential posse — but grass-roots Republicans from the East Coast to the West already see the man with the low drawl and the towering stature as their political savior. But is he?

It wouldn't be the first time a B-list actor united the country. In fact, part of what this former ladies' man has going for him is widespread Ronald Reagan nostalgia. That, and he's a refreshing contrast to the calculating likes of Gore and even Frist: He's a guy with a Senate legacy of bipartisanship and even-handedness. (When he led the Senate investigation into 1996 campaign-finance irregularities, he targeted not just the Clinton-Gore White House but Republicans, too.)

And he knows how to play the political game. At the start of his Senate race in 1994, Thompson was a high-dollar Washington lawyer and lobbyist who drove a Lincoln Continental, lived in a condo and wore dark suits and ties to even the most folksy barbecue-and-beans Tennessee campaign appearances. But nobody — nobody with an echo, anyway — accused him of being phony when he eventually decided to prop up his flailing bid with, well, props: a getup of jeans and work shirt and some down-home locomotion in the form of a used cherry-red Chevy pickup truck that he drove across the state and featured in television ads to transform his campaign.

Read the whole thing. Thompson comes across as both extremely likable and as politically agile. The anecdote Garrigan closes with shows Thompson's sense of humor in dealing with the press. That sense of humor and ability to win over critics might be exactly what is needed.