Rubber Stamp For A Dictator

The Venezuelan legislative body, the National Assembly, has just rubber stamped (T)Hugo Chavez's dictator for life plan. As expected.

Assembly President Cilia Flores said Chavez's proposed changes to the constitution, including the lifting of presidential term limits, were approved by all 167 lawmakers after about six hours of debate.

Final approval is expected within two or three months, and voters will then decide whether to approve the changes in a referendum.

The assembly has been solidly pro-Chavez since the opposition boycotted a 2005 vote and had been expected to sign off on the changes proposed by Chavez in Tuesday's first reading. The reforms, if approved, would extend presidential terms from six to seven years and allow Chavez to run again in 2013.

And that, my friends is why there is another word for the boycott of elections to "send a message": Suicide. Because the once-free nation of Venezuela is gone, gone, gone. But since Joe hasn't said a word about it, it's cool with him.

First They Came For The Orangutans

Next they'll be coming for the moose. Courtesy of the Jammie Wearing Fool, comes this story from Der Spiegel.

Norway is concerned that its national animal, the moose, is harming the climate by emitting an estimated 2,100 kilos of carbon dioxide a year through its belching and farting.

Norwegian newspapers, citing research from Norway's technical university, said a motorist would have to drive 13,000 kilometers in a car to emit as much CO2 as a moose does in a year.

Much like cows, bacteria in a moose's stomach create methane gas which is considered even more destructive to the environment than carbon gas. Cows pose the same problem.

The population of moose in Norway is estimated to be around 120,000. It is only a matter of time until some true believer calls for the eradication of the moose. For the good of the planet, of course. They're already doing it to the orangutans. With all the best intentions.

National Health Death Service Strikes Again

Britain, routinely held out as a role model for what socialized medicine can do shows just how well it can do in a new study. Folks like Michael Moore want the US to emulate the British National Health Service. A comprehensive new study shows just how grand the NHS is.

Britain has one of the lowest rates of cancer survival in all of Europe. And that rate is positively dismal compared to survival rates in the US with its "broken health care system.

Cancer survival rates in Britain are among the lowest in Europe, according to the most comprehensive analysis of the issue yet produced.

England is on a par with Poland despite the NHS spending three times more on health care.

Survival rates are based on the number of patients who are alive five years after diagnosis and researchers found that, for women, England was the fifth worst in a league of 22 countries. Scotland came bottom. Cancer experts blamed late diagnosis and long waiting lists.

In total, 52.7pc of women survived for five years after being diagnosed between 2000 and 2002. Only Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, the Czech Republic and Poland did worse. Just 44.8pc of men survived, putting England in the bottom seven countries.

The team, writing in The Lancet Oncology, found that Britain's survival rates for the most common cancers - colorectal, lung, breast and prostate - were substantially behind those in Western Europe. In England, the proportion of women with breast cancer who were alive five years after diagnosis was 77.8pc. Scotland (77.3pc) and Ireland (76.2pc) had a lower rate.

Rates for lung cancer in England were poor, with only 8.4pc of patients surviving - half the rate for Iceland (16.8pc). Only Scotland (8.2pc) and Malta (4.6pc) did worse.

Why so bad? Extremely long waiting times for radiation treatments is specifically cited. And you really have to go look at the tables they have. The US survival rates for all cancers are 10% better for women and 20% better for men. And US survival rates lead all of Europe. Every. Single. Country. Male of Female. For men the rates are 6% higher than the nearest country.

Got that? Highest cancer survival rates - much, much higher than the NHS has. Still think socialized medicine is a good idea? Really? How's that lobotomy working out for you?

UPDATE: Others who noticed this one (Technorati is having problems at the moment, so I can't get many): Reason Magazine, Bookworm Room, Tim Worstall, The Astute Bloggers,

Drop A Spoon, Save Your Life

Odd little story out of Sodus, New York (the old stomping grounds). A 73-year old woman was saved by a dropped spoon. She bent over to retrieve the fallen utensil and her house was literally leveled by an explosion.

SODUS, N.Y. - Dropping something may have saved Joy Horton's life. The 73-year-old woman was preparing some food in her western New York home on Monday morning when she dropped a spoon on the floor of her kitchen. When she bent down, her house exploded.

The explosion leveled her home in the Wayne County town of Sodus, on Lake Ontario about 25 miles east of Rochester.

Horton wasn't seriously injured. She crawled out from underneath the rubble and walked to her daughter's home nearby to get help.

I've heard of saved by the bell, but spared by the spoon? One hopes she held on to that spoon.

Sodus is home to the Ontario Midland Railroad, a tiny railroad that only covers about 56 miles of track. It is the remains of the old Hojack line. I mention it because in the fall foliage season they run passenger excursions using old New York Central passenger cars. My wife and I have been on one of those - it was quite a fun little day trip.

Who Says Nothing Ever Happens In Iowa?

Corn country. Flyover territory. The sticks. Iowa has been dismissed for years as a place where nothing ever really happens. But that simply isn't true. How many states can boast drunken, naked women with hammers beating people and smashing up cars while resisting arrest? Hmmm?

Police Sunday night arrested a Des Moines woman armed with a hammer, who was naked, following a domestic dispute where several individuals, including an officer, were assaulted.

According to a Des Moines police report, officers were called to 817 Buchanan Street on a domestic dispute with a hammer. They arrived and met with Sheree Sanford, 51, who said Satin Delfrano, 32, had been assaulting her and two other women.

Police found a blue van in the driveway with it's windows shattered and glass strewn on the driveway. Sanford said Delfrano was upstairs and had just smashed out the van's two large rear windows with a bed frame.

Officers went upstairs into a bedroom and found Delfrano naked with a hammer.

After being allowed to get dressed, police handcuffed her and escorted her outside where she tried to walk away on her knees and then kicked an officer in his right leg causing injury.

Another woman at the residence, Joyce Beaman, 46, said Delfrano had stayed the night and began drinking that morning, becoming severely intoxicated. Lisa Miller, 39, who was also present at the time, said Delfrano later became enraged for unknown reasons and began hitting her.

Come to think of it, how many states want to boast about drunken, naked women with hammers beating people and smashing up cars while resisting arrest? (Don't miss the mug shot. Charming.)

Drunken Flesh-Eating Goats

We have no idea why the writer of this story thinks this news is cute. A goat in the city of Bargarh in India is the home of Mantu, a flesh-gobbling, theatrically-inclined goat with a drinking problem.

Bargarh (Orissa), Aug 21: If you think goats are vegetarian, you haven't yet met Mantu - a male goat here that eats meat and drinks liquor.

The two-and-a-half-year-old goat lives at the Sana Bada Dhaba, a roadside eatery here, 350 km from the state capital Bhubaneswar.

"The animal has been living in the dhaba since its birth and slowly developed the habit of eating non-vegetarian food," dhaba owner Sana Naik, who named the goat, told IANS.

Mantu does not like grass - the staple diet of other goats. "The goat eats the cooked meat of other goats that we serve to customers," he said. "Because of its peculiar habits, we are not killing it."

The goat also drinks liquor. It obeys commands like monkeys.

"If you ask it to perform a death scene, it will lie on the ground as if dead. You ask it to show a fight scene, it will demonstrate like a warrior," he said.

The goat amuses customers and they share their food with it.

They won't be amused when Mantu goes bad, as goats are wont to do. Believe it or not, the story gets worse. Mantu's enabler is looking to find Mantu a wife. Soon there will be herds of drunken, ravenous, flesh-eating goats stalking the alleyways of Bargarh, looking for someone to invite for dinner.

This could make a great horror movie.

It Wasn’t The Monster Mash

But it was a graveyard smash. A drunken German woman managed to drive her vehicle through a graveyard, smashing headstones and damaging graves before finally coming to rest.

In an open grave.

The woman drove into the graveyard in the southern town of Mitterteich on a track running through it but veered off as she struggled to control her vehicle, local police said.

"Eventually she ended up stuck in a grave and couldn't get out, so we had to pull her out," a police spokesman said. "She said she'd come to visit one of her relatives' graves."

Lady, if that isn't a sign, I don't know what would be.

Hiroshima For The Truthers

I have not seen the History Channel special that, by all reports, totally and systematically demolishes the so-called 9/11 "truthers". But after reading some of the reviews, you couldn't pay me not to watch it as soon as I can. Pat Curley calls it "Hiroshima for the truthers." Rick Moran explains:

Prominently featured were historians like David Brinkley, Editor in Chief of Popular Mechanics James Meigs, and structural engineers, explosives experts, and a host of scientists, military experts, and eyewitnesses to the disaster. The cumulative effect of the testimony of the anti-conspiracists was absolutely devastating. The show left little doubt of the unhinged nature of the truthers, showing many of them – including radio host Alex Jones who has given vast amounts of air time to every kook, crazy, and nutcase with a theory on 9/11 – looking like the anti-intellectual fruitcakes they truly are.

The format was perfect. A truther would lay out a conspiracy theory which was then immediately debunked by 2 or 3 experts. Over two hours, a couple of dozen myths associated with 9/11 were laid to rest permanently including the “missile” that hit the Pentagon, the shoot down of Flight 93, the “implosion” of the towers,” and other theories not based on fact.

The implosion theory was debunked several times over. First, by the best forensic structural engineer in the country who, with the help of some excellent graphics and animation, showed exactly how the planes caused the towers to fall. An explosives expert (a young guy who was flabbergasted at the ignorance of the truthers regarding demolition) pointed out it would have taken weeks to rig the buildings for implosion and would have involved stripping drywall and ripping out walls. The nail in the coffin was supplied by one of the engineers who prepared the final report (working for the independent American Society of Civil Engineers) who showed how the collapse of the towers accounted for such things as the puffs of smoke seen in lower floors as the collapse was occurring as well as the speed of the collapse.

What is - and always has been - the real indication of how thoroughly stupid the 9/11 conspiracy nuts are is the almost total lack of any real scientists or engineers who sign on to their lunacy. One metallurgist and one failed engineering professor are all I am aware of. The rest of the "scientists" they claim are in, at best, the soft sciences, not the physical sciences.

UPDATE: Thanks to Pajamas Media for the link. Several others have weighed in on this: The Van Der Galiën Gazette, Macsmind, The Jawa Report, Captain's Quarters for starters. But Jimmie from The Sundries Shack commenting at Michael Van Der Galien's site has an absolutely world class, solid gold insult. This one should be taught at the college level:

There’s a difference between having an open mind and one that’s so ventilated that a stiff breeze makes it whistle.

That is a classic.

Endeavour Lands Safely

Shuttle Endeavour has safely landed at the Kennedy Space Center.

An Amazing Story

A man out bow hunting near Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada had the bad luck to surprise a grizzly bear with three cubs. Miraculously, when the bear attacked the man, Chris McLellan, managed to kill it with only a knife.

GRANDE PRAIRIE — A bow hunter who fought off a mother grizzly bear with only a knife was an avid woodsman with years of experience in the bush, his sister says.

Chris McLellan managed to kill the bear southwest of Grande Prairie last week when he apparently surprised it while she was with her three cubs.

Christa McLellan says her brother, who recently married and moved to Alberta from Nova Scotia on Aug. 12, had to have surgery to insert plates to repair his badly broken arm, but is otherwise fine.

"He's in the hospital and he's recuperating," she said, adding her brother knew what he was doing in the bush.

"He's been out with my father since he was a kid. He's not a newbie to this."

One outfitter, who lives on land close to where the attack occurred, said he spotted the sow and her three cubs just days before the attack.

Dave Coleman, an outfitter for 44 years, commended McLellan for keeping his wits about him in such a desperate situation, noting the bear would likely have been fierce.

That is keeping your wits in a bad situation. The bear would have killed him if he had tried to escape.

Endeavour Cleared To Land

Shuttle Endeavour has begun its descent to the Kennedy Space Center. NASA TV is carrying live coverage.

Blunt Assessment

A really blunt assessment of the children's programming arm of the British Broadcasting Company, the CBBC by a staffer is big news in Britain today. The staffer, presenter Kirsten O'Brien, who has been a regular on the CBBC for more than ten years, is rather harsh. She says that everyone at the CBBC is either gay or childless, but that they have one unifying trait:

They all hate kids.

A BBC children's presenter has raised eyebrows by claiming that "everyone at CBBC (the corporation's children's channel) is either gay or childless and don't like kids".

Kirsten O'Brien, a regular on children's television and radio for more than a decade, made the remarks during her stage show Confessions of a Children's TV Presenter at the Edinburgh Festival.

She went on to say: "Still, at least we're better than Palestinian children's TV, which gets kids to sing songs about AK-47 rifles."

There's a motto for the BBC to be proud of: "At least we're better than Hamas." (The BBC is claiming O'Brien made the comments in jest and that her employment with them is not in jeopardy. Our advice: clean your desk out now Ms. O'Brien and avoid the rush. When they start swearing your job is safe, you're toast.)

Where’s The Real Propaganda?

John Fund discusses a "documentary" airing on PBS tonight that focuses on a proposal to develop a gold mine in Romania. The film, which omits quite a few very important details about the real story, was apparently heavily financed by Greenpeace, the Hungarian Ministry of Environment and the George Soros-backed Energy Club of Hungary. What is left out of this film makes a very big difference.

Tonight, PBS will air "Gold Futures," a film by Hungary's Tibor Kocsis. The film focuses on residents in Romania's Rosia Montana, a rural Transylvanian town, who are divided over the benefits of a proposed gold mine. It also features Gabriel Resources, the Canadian mining company trying to convince them to relocate so it can dig for a huge gold deposit estimated at 14.6 million ounces, worth almost $10 billion. PBS describes the film as a "David-and-Goliath story."

While the film gives time to supporters and opponents of the mine, it leaves unsaid that half of the villagers voicing opposition have now either sold their homes or will not have to move, because they live in a protected area where the village's historic structures and churches will be preserved. Viewers who see pristine shots of the Rosia valley won't realize the hills hide a huge, abandoned communist-era mine, leaking toxic heavy metals into local streams–or that while the modern mining project will level four hills to create an open pit, it will also clean up the old mess at no cost to the Romanian treasury.

I thought I had done a post on the documentary Mine Your Own Business, but I can't seem to locate it at the moment. Fund mentions that film, which addresses the same mining proposal, but from a very different perspective.

The other side to the controversy is told in a new film that will never be shown on PBS, but is nonetheless rattling the environmental community. "Mine Your Own Business" is a documentary by Irish filmmakers Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney. They conclude that the biggest threat to the people of Rosia Montana "comes from upper-class Western environmentalism that seeks to keep them poor and unable to clean up the horrific pollution caused by Ceausescu's mining."

The latter film was largely funded by Gabriel Resources. That, of course, led to denunciations by the environmentalists that it was propaganda. But it seems that there is a lot of money being pumped into films by the anti-mining interests. So who's paying for what and why? Well, it turns out that Soros-backed organizations have been actively engaged in astroturfing the issue:

Opponents of the mine claim that Rosia Montana residents agree with their stance. "Local opposition to the mine is strong and organized" says a statement signed by 80 environmental groups in January. In his letter, Mr. Soros cites a recent poll organized by some members of Romania's parliament that "found 90% of respondents rejecting the project." But the poll turns out to be an unscientific Internet survey, and one of the environmental groups Mr. Soros funds urged people outside Romania to participate in it. What is clear: Two-thirds of Rosia Montana's people have accepted Gabriel's voluntary offer to buy their homes at above market rates. Most will move four miles away to a less polluted area.

It is important to note that the communist-era mining left an enormous environmental disaster behind. That would be cleaned up as part of this mining project. But the self-righteous are out in full force here. Phelim McAleer had this to say about that:

Mr. McAleer tells me such encounters should wake up people "who, like myself, unquestionably believed environmentalists were a force for good in the world." He still considers himself a liberal but, "it's sad that my fellow left-wingers and environmentalists who often come from the most developed countries are now so opposed to development."

Yeah, that about wraps that up. Go read the whole thing. There is a lot going on here and quite a lot of money in play - especially from the left side of this issue.

UPDATE: Kirk Leech left a comment. He's done some research into this and has documentation of the whole thing - including photographic evidence. His site, Golden Myths has a wealth of information. I have not had a chance to go through it all, but there is some really dramatic - and damning - stuff there. Just the housing pictures tell a lot about the disinformation the environmentalists are spreading.

“Self-Deluded Preciousness”

This op-ed from the Times of London is positively scathing. Mick Hume, who confesses to being quite an active protester during the 1980s, dissects the climate-protesting clowns of August who recently made pests of themselves at London's Heathrow airport. He is absolutely merciless.

The news has been full of spokespersons from the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow comparing their campaign of direct action with noble struggles of the past. One summed up the camp’s aims as being “to show it’s possible and pleasurable to live sustainably” (the joys of the composting toilet), and “to show that non-violent direct action works. Civil disobedience has in the past led to things like black people getting the vote.”

Grow up and get an education. The campaign against Heathrow expansion bears no comparison to those that led to “things like black people getting the vote”. Direct action is neither good nor bad in principle. It is just a tactic, used by all manner of protest movements. What matters most are the political aims and outlook informing the protests.

In the past, direct action was employed by people fighting to defend their own interests – working people struggling for jobs and better pay, women demanding the vote, black people seeking civil rights. The pursuit of self-interest was the driving force for political change. Others such as we on the Left supported their struggles, but we acted in solidarity, not as self-appointed substitutes for the miners or disadvantaged minorities.

Today, by contrast, to take political action in your own interests seems frowned upon as greedy, even sleazy. Instead, the Heathrow protesters insist that they are acting altruistically “on behalf of” others, speaking for the “voiceless” – the poor of the developing world, unborn generations, or simply the planet.

His most cutting remarks are for the clowns themselves:

The “grassroots” protest movement at Heathrow turns out to be an egotistical posture from self-appointed saviours who imagine that they are floating above the ignorant masses, acting for the planet. It might seem odd that such high-profile protests take place at a time of low-level interest in politics. In fact they are two sides of the same coin. Gestures of disengaged direct action, such as occupying the BAA car park in the middle of the night, are not trying to win an argument with anybody. They are media stunts designed to demonstrate that the protesters are parked on the side of the angels, armed with the (self) righteous sword of “peer-reviewed science” to smite anybody in their path.

This apparent taste for the dictatorship of an expert elite over the great unaware might be rather sinister if we took them seriously. But despite the high-minded declarations, these protesters are only playing at politics. There were not many clown outfits in evidence among the Sunday-best suits on the 1963 March on Washington.

Yet such are the rising levels of self-deluded preciousness among the protesters that some seem to believe they were subjected to historic levels of police oppression, because some officers “acted aggressively”.

The self-righteousness of the protesters is so thick you could cut it with a knife. Completely unacknowledged by the clowns is that most of the so-called carbon mitigation schemes are either of questionable use, no use at all or downright disastrous. And all of them will fail utterly unless China and India curb their emissions - which neither seem inclined to do. And the clowns are also not addressing the real impact on the people of the less developed nations, especially if the global economy stalls and food prices skyrocket.

Monster Policy

The organizers of a  duathlon in Scotland have taken out advertising insurance. Oh, they call it "Nessie" insurance and it supposedly covers any attack on participants in the event by the fabled creature, but it really is a cheap way to get lots of free publicity for the event.

LONDON (AFP) - Organisers of a duathlon in Scotland have taken out a one-million-pound (1.46-million-euro, 1.97-million-dollar) insurance policy against attack by or sighting of the fabled Loch Ness monster.

Transport operator FirstGroup said in a statement that its policy with insurers Royal and Sun Alliance would pay out should "Nessie" emerge from the murky depths of the vast watercourse and/or attack one of the competitors.

First Monster Duathlon race director Malcolm Sutherland said they were planning for all eventualities.

Jon Woodman, trading director at R and SA said: "This is one of our more unusual requests but it certainly gave our team something to get their teeth into."

Any "proven sighting" has to be independently verified, subject to policy terms and conditions, the insurer said.

We here at Blue Crab Boulevard are cheerfully helping the organizers get that free publicity. Mostly because it gives us a chance to go on record saying we'd pay £ 1 million to watch something like this happen! (Well, if we had anything like that kind of money, of course.)