Thank God For The United Nations!!!

Yes, the United Nations has been a bit lax about a few things. Rwanda and a genocide comes to mind. Oil for food and blatant corruption is another thing. Some UN peacekeepers raping and sexually enslaving women is yet another. Darfur is a concern. As is Burma. But now it can be revealed that the UN has its collective ducks in a row. They know exactly what is really important in the world! The real driver of all that is holy and good on this planet we live on. In fact, they have dedicated an entire year to it! Behold - in appropriate awe - the mighty focus of the United Nations on the really important things in the world! Ladies and gentlemen, the UN brings you:

The International YEAR of the POTATO!

NEW YORK (AFP) - The United Nations on Thursday officially launches "International Year of the Potato 2008," an initiative mocked in private by some diplomats but enabling governments to raise much-needed funds for agricultural research.

The move to "increase awareness of the importance of the potato as a food in developing nations" was proposed by the UN's Rome-based Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and adopted by the General Assembly in 2005.

Throughout 2008, the International Year of the Potato (IYP) will seek to underline the humble spud's role in improving food security and poverty alleviation.

"For us diplomats these 'international years of …' are of minor importance compared to resolutions concerning conflicts, or world diplomacy. But we cannot turn down proposals from specialist agencies," said a UN official who asked not to be identified.

"Strict rules limiting a country's possibility of requesting an 'international year of …' were introduced recently," he added.

"There was the international year of rice (2004), an international year of mountains (2002), now the Italians are trying to promote an international year of astronomy. We jump from one thing to another," he said.

This is the magnificent body that many in the world want to entrust with their very prosperity by obeying the UN's IPCC doomsaying. This is the body that the oppressed believe may help them. This is the body that ignores reality and puts a member from Zimbabwe on the sustainable development committee.

They don't have potatoes on the brain. They have potatoes for brains.

Ultimate Weapon Unleashed

This is bad, folks. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard, the source for truth about the horrors of the Animal Uprising™, have never been more dismayed. Oh, we thought it was awful when the animal overlords set the toilet rats loose. That is a pretty awful weapon, you'll have to agree. Then they went even lower. Hot Tubbing rats were very bad, indeed. And toilet frogs are pure evil. (Invisible toilet frogs could be even worse.) But the masters of the Animal Uprising™ have now reached a level of such infamy that we simply cannot fathom any greater evil.

Potty pythons.

NEW YORK - There was no Halloween bogeyman in the closet for one Brooklyn woman — just a 7-foot-long python in her toilet. Nadege Brunacci was washing her hands in her bathroom before dawn Monday when she glanced back and saw the slithering serpent peeking out from her toilet, most of its body hidden in the pipes.

"I turned on the light and screamed," Brunacci, 38, told the New York Daily News. "It still makes my heart race."

Brunacci slammed down the lid, put a heavy box on top of the toilet and began calling for help, which came from her landlord and firefighters. Plumbers had to tear apart the downstairs neighbor's pipes to capture the snake, she said.

Ms. Brunacci, thoroughly traumatized, can no longer use the real toilet. She has to use her daughter's training toilet. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have also stopped using our toilets and have, in fact, poured cement into the bowls as a precautionary measure. We are currently looking for a new domicile as a result. Sigh. We always seem to be trying to sell on a falling market.

Trackbacks Are Broken

I have no idea why - I really am not a software kind of guy. The trackbacks do not work for legitimate bloggers, but spammers seem to be able to get through - though the spam blockers catch them. I will likely be swapping a few things around, so the Crabitat may change and change again for a while until I get all this hashed out.

But the content will continue, regardless how the appearance may vary.

UPDATE: It may have been the anti-spam image. I have turned it off and have been able to get a test trackback in - I'd appreciate all the folks who have tried to try it again. You guys are great for helping me get this debugged.

Left Brain, Right Brain, Who Cares?

It's optical delusion time!

Ok, which way was it turning?

How about now?

Try this one now.

Are you sure it's left versus right brain?

How about this one?

Message Sent, Message Received

It appears as if Nancy Pelosi may have gotten the message some of her colleagues sent her yesterday. Five Democrats sent Pelosi a message yesterday that they were not supporting the Armenian genocide bill - a pretty clear signal that they did not have the votes lined up to pass it. Today, Pelosi tapdanced away.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday the prospects of a vote on Armenian genocide were uncertain, after several members pulled their support amid fears it would cripple U.S. relations with Turkey.

"Whether it will come up or not, or what the action will be, remains to be seen," Pelosi told reporters.

The House proposal, which would label as genocide the killing of Armenians a century ago by Ottoman Turks, has inflamed U.S. tensions with Turkey, which says the death toll has been inflated and was the result of civil unrest, not genocide. Support for the nonbinding resolution deteriorated this week after Turkey recalled its U.S. ambassador to Ankara and several lawmakers spoke out against it.

A member of NATO, Turkey also is considered a rare Muslim ally to the United States in its war on terrorism. A U.S.-run air base there has facilitated the flow of most cargo to American troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rep. John Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat considered influential on military affairs, said his party's leadership miscalculated support for the resolution. He predicted that such a vote would easily fail.

"If it came to the floor today, it would not pass," with some 55 to 60 Democrats opposing the measure, Murtha told reporters. As of Thursday, House Democrats will hold a 233-200 majority.

Murtha is a crooked politician of the first degree, but he is also a well known vote counter. He is one of the politicians who signaled Pelosi that she was in trouble if she called the vote. She's going to drop it. Message received.

Housekeeping Issues With The New Theme

I've just installed some new plugins to help control spammers (privately, I use a different name for them, but I do try to control the language around here.) I'm still tweaking all this and it may take some time. If anyone could test the trackback filter for me, I'd sure appreciate it. It is supposed to block trackbacks that do not link to the post (linking the Crabitat only counts as a spam.)

Pandering, Venezuelan Style

(T)Hugo Chavez is planning on giving all the inmates citizens of Venezuela a life of leisure - or at least one of idleness. He proposes cutting the workday to six hours per day. In exchange, the people just have to let him be president for life.

President Hugo Chavez has proposed slashing Venezuela's working day to six hours to turn its socialist revolution into a paradise of leisure - with one exception.

Under a new draft constitution debated in congress this week everyone will have more time for recreation and relaxation. Everyone, that is, except Mr Chavez.

As part of the same package of changes presidential term limits will be abolished, allowing Mr Chavez, who seldom seems to sleep or take time off, to continue his hyperactivity for some time to come.

Critics say the two proposals are directly related: the six-hour proposal is a populist sweetener to ease the constitution's passage in a December referendum which will give the president the right to stand for continuous re-election. They have also criticised a proposal to suspend due process in "emergencies", allowing citizens to be detained without charge.

As the economy grinds to a halt under the ministrations of a socialist government, the people will have plenty of time on their hands. And all it will cost them is their freedom. Such a deal.

Backstreet Bird Is Back

Snowball the cockatoo is a star. He can out-dance - and out-sing the Backstreet boys.

Snowball lives with Irena and Chuck Schulz who run a shelter for birds called Bird Lovers Only Rescue in Schererville, Indiana. But Snowball is not up for adoption. He is now the official spokesbird of the shelter. And a darn fine dancer.

Times Up?

Morgan Stanley has dumped every, single share of the New York Times that it owned. 10 million shares or a 7.3% stake of the Times. Share prices plummeted to the lowest level in ten years.

Oct. 17 (Bloomberg) — Morgan Stanley, the second-biggest shareholder in New York Times Co., sold its entire 7.3 percent stake today, according to a person briefed on the transaction, sending the stock to its lowest in more than 10 years.

The person declined to be identified because Morgan Stanley hasn't made the sale public yet. Traders with knowledge of the transaction said Merrill Lynch & Co. brokered a $183 million block trade of 10 million New York Times shares this morning.

Hassan Elmasry, managing director of Morgan Stanley Investment Management, unsuccessfully challenged the Sulzberger family's control of New York Times Co. through super-voting stock that gives them a board majority. Shareholders owning 42 percent of the company, parent of the namesake newspaper and Boston Globe, withheld support for directors at the publisher's April annual meeting.

“This guy has been speaking for a lot of people who are too discreet to speak up and challenge management,'' said Porter Bibb, a managing partner at Mediatech Capital Partners LLC in New York and a former New York Times Co. executive.

New York Times shares slid 54 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $18.37 at 2:51 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading and fell as low as $18.24, a level not seen since January 1997.

That is one rousing vote of no confidence in the Times or its management. The story goes on to describe how badly many of the big newspapers are doing right now. It is very badly, indeed.

Well? What Do You Think?

UPDATE: Ok, now comments appear to be working and the new theme looks like it is steady. Please let me know what you think.

I'd also appreciate any blogger testing the trackback function if you would be so kind.

I'd appreciate some feedback on the new look.

ATTENTION: Comments are hosed - if you try to post one you will go to Google - Working on it.   Fixed

Our Words For Today Are Duck And Deer

Or if those words were not originally in the lesson plan for a fifth-grade vocabulary class at Lloyd Road Elementary School in Aberdeen, New Jersey, they soon became the words of the day. Because right in the middle of the class, a large deer crashed through the window and right into the classroom.

ABERDEEN, N.J., Oct. 17 (UPI) — Fifth-grade students in a vocabulary class in Aberdeen, N.J., got an unexpected lesson in animal sciences when a deer crashed through their classroom window.

Teachers Brenda Adelson and Bonnie McCullough had just moved from the front of the room when the buck burst in at 10 a.m. Tuesday, the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press reported.

The deer trotted through the classroom into a hall, into the vacant nurse's office, the staff lounge and finally into the empty cafeteria of Lloyd Road Elementary School.

Worst of all, the buck did not have a hall pass. School employees and police managed to herd the deer back outside - where it promptly attacked its reflection in another window. Deer are such vain creatures.

Somalia Storms UN Compound, Kidnaps UN Official

The government of Somalia has displayed its respect for world opinion and the UN today. It sent armed men to storm the UN compound in Mogadishu and has kidnapped the UN official in charge of food relief for that sad little country.

MOGADISHU, Somalia - The head of U.N. food agency operations in the violence-wracked Somali capital was taken away Wednesday by 50 to 60 heavily armed government security officers who had stormed the U.N. compound in Mogadishu, the agency said.

The World Food Program suspended aid distribution in Mogadishu in response to the detention of the official, Irdris Osman.

Interior Minister Mohamed Mohamoud Guled denied government officers carried out any operation at the U.N. compound. But he added that the WFP last month distributed food aid without consulting the government, a reason that the government has in recent months used to block distributions to areas perceived to be against the government.

The detention followed some of the heaviest fighting in weeks in the capital. Overnight, at least eight civilians and one policeman died during a battle between Islamic insurgents and policemen, said residents and the police on Wednesday.

Osman was being held in a cell at the National Security Service headquarters and the WFP has not received any explanation for the action, the agency said, adding his detention violated international law.

"In the light of Mr. Osman's detention and in view of WFP's duty to safeguard its staff, WFP is forced immediately to suspend these distributions and the loading of WFP food from our warehouses in the Somali capital," the agency's statement said.

No shots were fired when the officers stormed the U.N. compound in Mogadishu, the statement said.

Even the most thuggish of governments has nothing whatsoever to fear from the United Nations. They know it, that's why they do these sorts of things.

Put On Your Sailin’ Hsus

The Los Angeles Times has not dropped the Norman Hsu-Hillary Clinton campaign funding scandal. They note today that not all the Hsu-linked funds have been returned.

WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton returned more than $800,000 in contributions donated to her presidential campaign that were arranged by alleged swindler Norman Hsu. But campaign officials said Tuesday they had no plans to return more than $260,000 that many of the same donors gave to her Senate political accounts.

Officials said they would return those contributions only if requested to do so by individual contributors.

A Los Angeles Times analysis found that 77 donors whose contributions to the presidential campaign were returned last month also gave to Clinton's two Senate-related political funds.

Her Senate campaign committee, Friends of Hillary, received $235,000 in donations from the 77 donors later linked to Hsu. Ten of those contributors gave an additional $28,000 to Clinton's leadership political fund, HillPac.

In September, Clinton announced that she would return all donations to her presidential campaign that were connected to Hsu, who had been one of her most valued fundraisers. She made the decision after reports in The Times that Hsu was a fugitive from a 1991 fraud charge, that he had been pressing some of his investors to contribute to the senator, and that the FBI was looking into his investment schemes.

Of course the Times could have gotten a thorough analysis from Flip Pidot - and it would have revealed more information of who gave what to whom when.

Assuming the discrepancies represent donations made to Hillary's Senate campaign (rather than her Presidential campaign), it's still not clear whether she has already or intends to refund those contributions (since those paper filings are not yet available for review).  Either way though, whether she's refunding them from the other committee or whether she's decided to keep those funds, the total Hsu-connected contributions to Hillary the candidate will wind up being far higher than the $850,000 figure she disclosed last month.

Neglecting to refund the Senate-side contributions from Hsu-related donors (if that's the explanation for the discrepancy) could be the product either of heroic brazenness or extreme sloppiness.  And while I won't accuse Clinton of not being brazen, the more I look at the 3rd quarter filing, the more I'm leaning toward extreme sloppiness.

I realized something was seriously askew when I noticed a few California addresses among the refunded donors with New York City ZIP codes.  And vice versa.  With a little help from Google Maps, I ran the ZIP code for each of the nearly 250 refunds issued on 9/14 and found that 118 (47%) were incorrect.  What's more, 66 of the ZIP codes used (27%) didn't even hit the right state.  They're frequently hundreds or even thousands of miles off.

So how, exactly, did the funds get refunded? Were the checks actually delivered to the donors or did they go off into the Neverland of the US Postal Service? Generally, sending things with the wrong zip code will get that item returned as undeliverable. Strange, isn't it?

Background Color Change

Some of you may have noticed that I've changed the background color for the site. For some reason, Firefox and some other browsers have had difficulty displaying this site properly and the pretty blue background would take forever to go to the background and let users actually read the site. I've deleted that background and am actually starting to work on a new look for the site.

Destructive Ambition

Robert Samuelson has a thought-provoking column out today. His subject is the dark side of ambition and how it can lead to pointless, self-destructive behavior. Ambition is both the blessing and the curse of America.

A great strength of American society is the drive to succeed — well, not just to succeed but to do better than anyone else; to be a star, a tycoon, an authority, a power, a celebrity or a leader; to be admired, respected, feared or obeyed more than your peers. It is the belief in these possibilities that motivates countless Americans to strive for excellence, to work hard and to search for new discoveries and inventions. As for one of the great weaknesses of American society, see all of the above.

It is an enduring paradox of the American condition. There is a point at which ambition and the determination to succeed, which generally serve us well, turn destructive, corrupting and dishonest. Success becomes its own god. Winning is what matters; the methods or consequences count little or not at all.

The latest reminder of the paradox comes from three recent cases: Bill Belichick, the coach of the New England Patriots; runner Marion Jones; and trial lawyer William Lerach. Belichick had opponents' defensive signals videotaped, contrary to explicit National Football League rules; Jones admitted taking illegal drugs around the 2000 Olympics; and Lerach pleaded guilty to illegally hiring plaintiffs as fronts for filing suits against companies. Belichick got off fairly easy (a $500,000 fine), but the others did not. Jones has returned five medals (three gold, two bronze) won at the Sydney Olympics, and Lerach faces $8 million of penalties and at least a year in jail.

What connects these cases is that the transgressions were largely, or perhaps entirely, pointless. Does anyone really believe that Belichick's Patriots didn't win three Super Bowls (2002, 2004, 2005) on inherent ability? Jones almost certainly would have earned some medals without doping. Lerach was among the kingpins of trial attorneys. Although he might have missed some suits by not having dummy plaintiffs, his firm surely could have remained in the top tier while abiding by the rules.

Read the rest, Samuelson makes a number of excellent observations. Part of the problem is the distorted view that the media gives us of the world and the importance of celebrity. Just look at how much time, money and effort is spent on reporting about a ditzy singer-turned-parent, Britney Spears. Look how much time people invest in living life vicariously through unreal reality television shows like American Idol.

There are many examples of blind ambition turned ugly these days. I would submit that James Dobson's threats to back a third party fit into that category. His own self-importance would lead him into ruining himself. I would also submit that Hillary Clinton's latest round of pandering could also backfire. Ed Morrisey today points to the latest Hillary pandering move, vastly expanding entitlements at the same time the Social Security time bomb is starting its slow-motion explosion with the first boomers retiring. Morrisey points to Clinton's proposal to expand the Family Medical Leave Act and provide even more funding for day care.

"With an eye toward flexibility and supporting the needs of small businesses"? Ask businesses now, small and large, how "flexible" the FMLA makes them now. Small businesses do not have "needs" for more government mandates on leave or sick days. Both are better left to the labor market. The expansion of FMLA to smaller businesses will make them less competitive against larger firms who can absorb that federal mandate easier and will force them to spend more on labor, driving up their prices and making them uncompetitive.

The "needs" Hillary wants to address are her own.

Yes they are. As Samuelson points out, there can be a dark side to ambition.

UPDATE: The New York Times reports the annual cost of Clinton's "family friendly" proposals to be $1.75 billion. To be funded by magic, apparently.