Life, Liberty And The Pursuit Of Hannah Montana Tickets?

I had no idea that the Declaration of Independence (much less the Constitution) guaranteed a right to concert tickets. Gee, learn something new every day.

The City Council is looking into why the "Hannah Montana" concert at the Sprint Center sold out minutes after the tickets went on sale.

City leaders want Ticketmaster and the Sprint Center to explain how some brokers were selling tickets at higher prices and were advertising the tickets before they went on sale.

Dozens of upset parents contacted KMBC when they were ready to buy tickets at 10 a.m. Saturday but were told the event had already sold out.

"Hannah Montana" is a popular show on the Disney Channel starring Miley Cyrus. The concert is scheduled for Dec. 3.

Oh darn. Best part:

"I have a 10-year-old daughter — we wanted to go on a girl's night," mother Frances Lopez told KMBC. "And I was frustrated immediately."

Gee. We really are sorry about that. How awful to have to think of something else to do! This is a travesty! This is borderline child abuse! This is an excessive use of exclamation points!!!!! This is probably sounding pretty sarcastic, right?

Good. (Oh, and I'd like Ticketmaster to explain whether or not they were involved in covering up the real truth about Peruvian meteors. Why? No, we should ask: why not?)

British Royal Society ‘Vulnerable To Extreme Shortsightedness’

The headline in the Guardian screams: Sellafield's plutonium store 'vulnerable to terrorist attack'. All they lack is thirty exclamation points after it to make it a true internet classic. The Reuters story takes the hyperventilating position: Britain has plutonium for 17,000 Nagasaki bombs. Again, all it needs it the excessive punctuation. Here's the Guardian first:

Britain's stocks of plutonium are kept in "unacceptable" conditions and pose a severe safety and security risk, experts warn today.

The Royal Society says ministers must urgently review the way more than 100 tonnes of the radioactive element, separated during the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, is held at the Sellafield complex in Cumbria. The society, Britain's premier scientific academy, says a previous warning to the government has been ignored, and that the rise of international terrorism means the UK must now find a way to use or dispose of the material.

Plutonium is highly toxic and is the primary component of most nuclear bombs. In a report published today, the society says a well-informed terrorist group could turn a small amount of the stockpiled material into a crude atomic weapon.

And now on to Reuters:

The toxic stockpile, which has doubled in the last decade, comes mainly from reprocessing of spent uranium fuel from the country's nuclear power plants, so to stop it growing the practice must end, the Royal Society said.

"There should be no more separation of plutonium once current contracts have been fulfilled," said the report "Strategy options for the UK's separated plutonium."

Plutonium, one of the most radiotoxic materials known, is produced when spent uranium fuel from power stations is reprocessed to retrieve reusable uranium.

It can be processed into mixed oxide (MOX) fuel but it can also be used in nuclear weapons and so poses a security threat.

"Just over six kilograms of plutonium was used in the bomb that devastated Nagasaki," said Geoffrey Boulton, the report's lead author. "We must take measures to ensure that this very dangerous material does not fall into the wrong hands."

Paradoxically, the Royal Society said the safest option was to leave spent fuel as it was when it came out of the reactor because it was so radioactive that it was far harder to handle.

Not impossible, not unusable. Just "harder to handle." Strictly speaking, that is a completely factual statement. It is also completely meaningless. Many things are hard to handle. But not impossible. Extracting plutonium from spent fuel is very straightforward - much less technically challenging than enriching uranium. The Royal Society is exhibiting an extremely bad case of shortsightedness here. There is only one way to get rid of fissile material.

Burn it.

Use it in a nuclear reactor for peaceful purposes or explode it in a bomb; burning is the only way to get rid of it. There is no other way to render it safe and beyond the reach of terrorists. Period. Look closely at the tip of your little finger to the first joint. That is the approximate size of a nuclear reactor fuel pellet. With a 3-4% enrichment a fuel pellet that big yields about the same amount of energy as two train cars full of coal. The only fuel actually consumed in the reaction is the 3-4% of U-235 (or Pu-239). The alternative to using it is to guard it forever. Eventually, the guards will fail or people will lose interest and it will fall into the wrong hands.

So, either use it up for peaceful purposes or wait for it to fall into the wrong hands. Your choice. We know where the Royal Society stands.

Cue The Villagers!

(Apropos this post.) The villagers waste no time in passing out the torches and pitchforks.

In Dante's Inferno, the Opportunists were "the people who refused to take sides on the whole good vs. evil thing, but just looked after themselves. As a result, they're doomed to forever run after a banner while being stung by wasps and hornets… These people aren't technically in hell. They're not evil enough to be in hell, so they're in the vestibule of hell."

Obama didn't take a vote on the Moveon condemnation, but an hour earlier he voted for the Boxer amendment.

What a sad spectacle of a politician. 

Obama, we hardly knew ye. They'll be savaging you from now until you fold. We'd just like to point out that there is a place well inside the vestibule of the Inferno that Matt might want to remember. Like the fifth circle. There, the souls of the wrathful are forever trapped in the filth, stench and slime of the Styx. They pass eternity in attacking each other.

Just sayin', Matt.

A Heaping Helping Of Moose Milk

Well, the Russians have come up with a new cottage industry: moose milking. No, really, they have.

FARMERS have taken to milking the humble moose after centuries of trying to domesticate the horned quadruped - and the key is to smell like one of the beasts.

Milking the moose, while sounding like a euphemism, is actually become a small industry in Russia, where it is being drunk in sanatoriums, according to the BBC.

And it takes more than to just think like a moose, with farmers covering themselves with a scent that smells like a calf in order to attract the females.

While it is being milked by hand, the moose believes that a calf is sucking from its teats due to the smell of the milker.

Moose milk maids, however, report a sharp decline in date offers. By humans at any rate.  So, what do the Russians do with the milk. Why they use it to kill ulcer patients.

Head doctor at the Ivan Susanin Sanatorium Natalya Yuskevich told the BBC that moose milk was very helpful.

“It’s just like cow milk, but (it) has much more fat and more protein,” Dr Yuskevich said.

“We use it to treat gastrointestinal diseases like stomach ulcers.”

(There is an actual video of moose milking here) Since drinking milk is about the worst thing you can do for an ulcer (despite decades of being prescribed by Western physicians, mind you) drinking moose milk has got to be worse. (More fat, more protein, more rebound acid production.) We here at Blue Crab Boulevard sincerely hope that Vladimir Putin, head fish-kisser in Russia, poses for some pictures milking a moose.

We do hope it's a bull, too.

WaPo Says MoveOn Ad Lacks Facts

The data provided by Gen. Petraeus on sharply declining Iraqi casualty rates is certainly open to analysis, debate, and challenge. We plan to take a closer look at them in a future post. However, MoveOn.org does not provide adequate factual support for its larger assertion that Petraeus is "constantly at war with the facts" and is "cooking the books" for the White House. In the absence of fresh evidence, we award MoveOn.org three Pinocchios.

The MoveOn supporters are in full screech mode in the comments section.

Ahmadinejad Backs Off

Drudge is reporting that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is backing off from his request to visit Ground Zero. I've waited to blog about this until the dust had settled a bit.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will not press his plan — just denied by New York City Police for security reasons — to visit Ground Zero in New York City, he tells 60 MINUTES' Scott Pelley in an exclusive interview conducted today in Iran. The Iranian leader says he's "amazed" and skeptical that most Americans view his visit there as insulting as his intention was only to show respect. The interview will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES, Sunday Sept. 23 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS television Network.

Frankly, a man who expresses nothing but hatred and contempt for America has no place at that spot where so many of our people died. There is no reason to accommodate Mahmoud's attempted stunt. And that is quite surely what it is. There have been a lot of bloggers weighing in on this one since it broke here are a few of them, via Memeorandum: JammieWearingFool, The American Pundit, Classical Values, Weekly Standard, The Corner, Cox & Forkum, Scared Monkeys.

But as Non-Party Politics points out, some bloggers are defending Ahmadinejad - believe it or not.

No, the leader of the largest state sponsor of Islamic terror should not be allowed to visit Ground Zero. This would be an offense to every casualty of 9/11, to their families, and to every ordinary American citizen that was attacked that day.

It is appalling that all the while acknowledging Ahmadinejad probably has ulterior motives, and likely using the trip as a "stunt," it's worth dirtying the memory of our dead for something that may be "a 'good faith' gesture."

I will also point out that Iran took Americans hostage. Iran bankrolled the murder of Americans. Iran has called repeatedly for the downfall of America. And Ahmadinejad is one of the most vocal. This is not a good time for a chorus of Kumbaya.

Senate Condemns MoveOn Ad

The Senate voted overwhelmingly to condemn the smear attack on General David Petraeus by MoveOn. The vote was 72-25. All of the votes against the measure were by Democrats (Sanders, the independent socialist from Vermont joined them). Ed Morrisey points out the obvious here:

It's a particularly sad commentary on the Democratic Party that they cannot bring themselves to support the very commander they sent to lead American troops in battle by a unanimous vote. It's not a case of a few fringe politicians like Bernie Sanders or Barbara Boxer, either. The Majority Leader, Harry Reid, and his chief deputy, Dick Durbin, refused to condemn the smear on Petraeus' honor. Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd, both of whom want to become Commander in Chief over the military, chose to endorse MoveOn's smear campaign against a man who has dedicated his life to defending this nation and serving presidents in a nonpartisan manner.

So, they voted for Petraeus before they voted against him. Very nice. The oath that Senators swear reads as follows:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.

I don't see any reference to swearing allegiance to MoveOn. But for all intents and purposes, that is really what 25 United States Senators did today.

Flash: Penguins Take Hostage

We regret to inform our readers that Jessica Alba has been taken hostage by a gang of penguins. (Obviously, she's suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.)

Bobby’s Corner: More Great News

Hey, everyone! It's me, your favorite socialist icon, Robert Mugabe again. Once again, I'm sending in another letter to counter the Western imperialist media's misinterpretation of events in my little slice of heaven on earth. And the host of my letters here on the interwebby thing has even archived all my greatest hits in one place http://bluecrabboulevard.com/category/bobbys-corner/. What a terrific guy, even if he is a capitalistic pig.

Anyway, we have reached a new milestone here in Zimbabwe. In my last letter, I told you about my plan to make every person in Zimbabwe a millionaire. We, fabulous news: we've achieved that milestone ahead of schedule because of my outstanding leadership!

A diner pulls out a huge wad of bank notes to pay a $3million bill at a Harare restaurant, underlying the economic chaos caused by hyperinflation in Zimbabwe.

With Zimbabwe's international isolation growing, the country's rapidly depreciating dollar means there are acute shortages of food and the most basic goods.

The southern African state has the world's highest official inflation of nearly 7,000 percent. Independent estimates put real inflation closer to 25,000 percent and the International Monetary Fund has forecast it reaching 100,000 percent by the end of the year.

Whoo hoo! We're number one! As I understand it, the meal in question was some fine Chinese food, washed down with some "vintage water" from Bulawayo. (That's the new, enlightened socialist name for it. We will no longer use that Western imperialist word "sewage".) And I've been talking things over with my good friend Hugo and he's given me a great idea. We're going to set the clocks here in Zimbabwe to a different, more egalitarian, time zone, just like Venezuela!

Here's the plan: we're going to reset all the clocks to midnight - and leave them there! That's right, why any of my happy fellow citizens can already tell you that a minute here already seems to last an eternity! Now it actually will! And we won't be letting citizens waste their money on expensive time pieces: they just won't need them.

Well, that's all for now. Kim's on line two trying to sell me some sort of night light. At least that's what I think he meant when he said it glowed in the dark.

Your Pal,

Robert Mugabe

Candidates In The Nudes

Or rather, nude candidates. A small women's political party in Poland is getting a lot of free publicity by posting a "nude" picture of their candidates for parliament. The posters do not actually show anything, of course but they are getting international buzz from the stunt.

WARSAW (AFP) - A new Polish women's political party risks shocking the majority Catholic country by plastering nude posters of their female candidates for the upcoming October 21 parliamentary election.

Seven women, including Women's Party (Partia Kobiet, PK) founder and president, writer Manuela Gretkowska, have launched their campaign with nude posters of themselves with the logo "The Party of Women. Poland is a Woman" masking their private parts.

The poster also incorporates their electoral slogan: "Everything for the future… and nothing to hide."

The poster can be seen at the Partia Kobiet website. It is safe for work unless your company has an extremely strict policy - use your judgment.

UPDATE: I do things like this just to torment my loyal commenters. Here's Hillary's bust.

Has Dan Rather Gone Off The Rails?

Howard Kurtz at the Washington Post reports that some of Dan Rather's former co-workers are appalled by the lawsuit Rather brought against CBS.

In an extraordinary move that reflects the depth of his resentment toward his former network, Dan Rather sued CBS yesterday, charging that he was made a "scapegoat" for a discredited 2004 story about President Bush's National Guard record because CBS wanted to "pacify the White House."

CBS management "coerced" the veteran news anchor "into publicly apologizing and taking personal blame for alleged journalistic errors in the broadcast," says the $70 million suit, which also names Sumner Redstone, chief executive of the network's then-parent company, Viacom; CBS Chairman Les Moonves; and former CBS News president Andrew Heyward.

Several former colleagues said they were baffled by the move. "I think he's gone off the deep end," said Josh Howard, who was forced to resign as executive producer of "60 Minutes II" after CBS retracted the story. "He seems to be saying he was just the narrator.

"He did every interview. He worked the sources over the phone. He was there in the room with the so-called document experts. He argued over every line in the script. It's laughable."

Rome Hartman, a former executive producer of "CBS Evening News" who now works for the BBC, said: "It's got to be about this lasting sense of hurt and pride. I was flabbergasted. I just don't get it."

As for his chances in court:

Lynne Bernabei, a Washington lawyer who specializes in employment disputes, called Rather's suit "a hard case to prove" but said he might mount a credible argument that CBS had breached the contract by minimizing his airtime. Still, she said, "the fact that he made an on-air admission that he made mistakes makes it hard for him to prove some of the other claims that they misled him."

There are several ways to look at this. Maybe Rather is losing it. The suit could be nothing more than his ego working. Or it could be a coldly calculated publicity stunt. I suspect that he is completely out of touch with reality, personally. If this case ever goes to trial, Rather will lose. But wouldn't the trial itself be fun for the rest of us?

UPDATE: Others: Captain's Quarters, Hot Air, Beldar, A Blog For All, NewsBusters, Bluey Blog, Ed Driscoll, LGF, Libertarian Leanings,

Hsu’s Crying Now?

One love feeds the fire
One heart burns desire
I wonder, who's cryin' now
Two hearts born to run
Who'll be the lonely one
I wonder, who's cryin' now
(Journey, Who's Crying Now)

Things are about to get worse for Norman Hsu, according to the Wall Street Journal. Quite a lot worse. The U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York is about to file new criminal charges against the two-time fugitive. The charges are over a the alleged bilking of investors in a pyramid scheme and will also encompass campaign finance law violations.

Federal officials are expected to bring a criminal case against Norman Hsu today, charging the Democratic super-donor with operating a $60 million pyramid scheme and violating campaign-finance laws.

The case, to be announced this afternoon by the U.S. attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, encompasses complaints by investors who gave tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Hsu, who said he was putting the money into a lucrative apparel operation. It also is expected to charge Mr. Hsu with crimes relating to his legendary fund-raising.

A lawyer and a spokesman for Mr. Hsu did not immediately return calls for comment this morning.

One thing is for sure: the reported amounts of money involved keep growing. Meanwhile, Flip is reporting that the Hillary! Clinton campaign has not, repeat, not returned money to at least one of the people Hsu recruited. This of course brings up the question of how much - if any - of the $850,000 has actually left the Clinton coffers.

The disclosure filings confirm that the reader in question did contribute $2,300 to Clinton during the current cycle.

So how about it, Senator - it's been 10 days since Wolfson said the refunds would be received "this week".  Are the checks in the mail?

Asked about his connection to Hsu, the reader explained he was among the investors in Joel Rosenman's Source Financing Investors, the vehicle that invested $40 million with Hsu in a series of presumably bogus deals.  And it sounds like he's not alone among his co-investors in wondering if that refund check is ever going to arrive.

Out of all of us who invested in SFI and were "asked" to contribute to Hillary Clinton's election campaign I have only heard one person say he was told "the check was in the mail" when he called the Hillary Campaign offices to complain.  As far as I know he has not received it yet.

That's interesting, isn't it? The media should be screaming right now.

Still More Dirty Money For Hillary?

The Wall Street Journal finds another irregularity in campaign funds collected by the Clinton campaign. This one could be a real problem for them. One donor is stating publicly that the "personal" donation she gave was really corporate money.

BRISTOW, Va. — When Hillary Rodham Clinton held an intimate fund-raising event at her Washington home in late March, Pamela Layton donated $4,600, the maximum allowed by law, to Mrs. Clinton's presidential campaign.

But the 37-year-old Ms. Layton says she and her husband were reimbursed by her husband's boss for the donations. "It wasn't personal money. It was all corporate money," Mrs. Layton said outside her home here. "I don't even like Hillary. I'm a Republican."

The boss is William Danielczyk, founder of a Washington-area private-equity firm and a major fund-raising "bundler" for Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Layton's gift was one of more than a dozen donations that night from people with Republican ties or no history of political giving. Mr. Danielczyk and his family, employees and friends donated a total of $120,000 to Mrs. Clinton in the days around the fund-raiser.

In an interview, Mr. Danielczyk said he "did not and would not" reimburse employees or others for their political donations. Such reimbursement would be illegal. Mr. Danielczyk said he was a co-host for the event at Mrs. Clinton's home. "Everybody was asked to contribute," he said, "some said yes and some said no." He added, "No arm was twisted."

This, along with the Norman Hsu revelations should be a warning to all campaigns - from either party - that the use of "bundlers" is problematic. Given that Hillary Clinton has a long history of being associated with fundraising scandals, her campaign should have been smarter than this.

The Persistence Of Bad Ideas

Mark Davis looks at HillaryCare 2.0 and finds it is just as bad an idea now as it was back in the 90s.

The tone of much of the coverage seems to be: She tried to make changes, deserves credit for the attempt, it's too bad she failed, and maybe she'll succeed this time.

But what if her proposed changes, then and now, are a horrible idea?

Let us set aside every positive or negative opinion we have of Mrs. Clinton for an objective examination of whether America's world-dominating health care system is hurt or helped by a vast increase in government involvement.

I think you sense my answer. In 1993 and today, she pays lip service to American health care, calling it the best in the world. In the same breath, she still proposes meddling in ways that can only denigrate that quality.

Her zeal is based on one of the great myths of modern times, the mistaken belief that we have a health care "crisis."

To be sure, some people face monstrous health care costs without the safety net of insurance to protect them, but most of the 47 million Americans who lack health insurance have bypassed it by choice. Plenty of healthy young people and couples choose to forgo premiums to free up money for other things.

We can consider that a dangerous gamble, but it does not constitute some blight of victimization requiring a government solution.

Anyone may reasonably observe that the U.S. health care system has problems. But most of those problems rest in how health care is paid for, and none of those ills get better with layers of new federal obligations.

The whole "debate" on health care hinges on the conflation of two completely different issues. Health insurance is one, access to care is the other. They are not at all the same. The number of uninsured in the US includes people here illegally and people who refuse to buy available insurance, not just those who can't afford it. So even that issue is being treated dishonestly. The other thing that is not talked about in all the feel-good rhetoric coming from the politicians is a simple one: the Federal budget is already heading for a disaster with the mandates for Social Security. Adding yet another hugely expensive (and undoubtedly grossly inefficient) program will not improve that situation one bit.

The High Cost Of Gore

The Age is reporting on the high cost of seeing Al Gore - and has a rather startling admission from Gorezilla as well.

AL GORE has a story he wants to tell the world. But it will cost you a thousand dollars to hear it.

In a passionate attack on the climate policies of Prime Minister John Howard and US President George Bush, the former US vice-president, addressing a very expensive lunch in Sydney yesterday, called Australia and the US "the Bonnie and Clyde" outlaws of the global environment for their failure to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Mr Gore called on Australia to change course on Kyoto and its climate policies, saying if it did "it would be impossible for the United States to withstand the pressure" to join the rest of the world in ratifying Kyoto.

Its always nice when a former Vice President preaches ways to overcome the sovereignty of his own country to foreign leaders. Oh, and the admission:

Raising his voice almost to a shout, he said climate change was not scientific, political or ideological.

It is nice that he finally admitted it isn't scientific. Vaclav Klaus also agrees that global warming isn't scientific. However, the President of the Czech Republic would beg to differ on the ideological part.. He lived under communism for many years. He knows a real threat to freedom when he sees it.

The threat I have in mind is the irrationality with which the world has accepted the climate change (or global warming) as a real danger to the future of mankind and the irrationality of suggested and partly already implemented measures because they will fatally endanger our freedom and prosperity, the two goals we consider – I do believe – our priorities.

We have to face many prejudices and misunderstandings in this respect. The climate change debate is basically not about science; it is about ideology. It is not about global temperature; it is about the concept of human society. It is not about nature or scientific ecology; it is about environmentalism, about one – recently born – dirigistic and collectivistic ideology, which goes against freedom and free markets.

I spent most of my life in a communist society which makes me particularly sensitive to the dangers, traps and pitfalls connected with it. Several points have to be clarified to make the discussion easier:

1. Contrary to the currently prevailing views promoted by global warming alarmists, Al Gore’s preaching, the IPCC, or the Stern Report, the increase in global temperatures in the last years, decades and centuries has been very small and because of its size practically negligible in its actual impact upon human beings and their activities. (The difference of temperatures between Prague where I was yesterday and Cernobbio where I am now is larger than the expected increase in global temperatures in the next century.)

His close is memorable:

I really do see environmentalism as a threat to our freedom and prosperity. I see it as “the world key current challenge.”

I have been rounding up news articles from all over the world about the incredible amount of real environmental damage being done in the name of global warming for a while now. Al Gore has a very large financial stake in "sustainable" resources. There is a huge conflict of interest in his preaching. Yet his sycophants don't even question that. The man flies about on a Gulfstream jet - emitting literally tons of the carbon he preaches about and his supporters are silent. He uses 20 times the average amount of energy to power one of his three homes and people line up to fork over more money to line his pockets. The world cannot afford the high cost of Gore.

(H/T Memeorandum for the Australian story. Vaclav Klaus essay courtesy of Maggie's Farm, who found it at Gay and Right.)