Blue Crab Boulevard

In Britain they are now predicting that, despite a few warm days, it is likely to be the coldest February in at least a decade.

When a pony's stable is the great outdoors, he doesn't get much of a roof over his mane.

So this fellow woke up in the New Forest in Hampshire with a fair dusting of frost on yesterday's freezing morning.

He didn't even have the comfort of a good breakfast, as the grass he nibbled at was just as icy.

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The freeze hit Britain hard on Saturday night as temperatures plummeted to -9C.

Much of the country woke up to a hard frost yesterday morning and the weather is expected to stay bitterly cold during the first part of the week.

Despite the freezing conditions, the sun brightened up what could have otherwise been a bleak day yesterday.

The temperature is set to fall below zero again tonight with weather predications of 3C.

Experts predict this month could end up being one of the coldest Februaries in 10 years despite the mild few days enjoyed by many earlier this week.

A Met Office spokesman said: "The coldest places are likely to be along the Welsh borders and across the Pennines where it could get down to -9C and it's likely to be well below freezing everywhere else." 

I pointed to a number of things that indicate how cold this winter has been in a post I did yesterday. It has been a thoroughly cold winter here in the American Midwest - in fact it is snowing again where I live and the north wind is brutal. When the warm days hit Britain it was a sign of global warming according to the press (can't find the article, oddly) now it is a cold winter. Funny, isn't it?

ABC News is reporting that Barack Obama took advantage of the cancellation of a campaign event in Wisconsin  (too much snow) to pay a surprise, secret call on John Edwards in North Carolina. 

ABC News' David Wright and Sunlen Miller Report: Mother Nature may have called a cease-fire in the snows of Wisconsin, but Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., appears to have put the time to good use.

A helicopter cameraman for ABC's Raleigh-Durham affiliate WTVD spotted Obama leaving former rival John Edwards' house on the North Carolina.

Obama is actively courting John Edwards's endorsement, as Edwards still remains undecided in throwing his support behind Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., or Obama.

Clinton met with Edwards on Feb. 7.

Obama speaks with Edwards over the phone regularly. On Wednesday at a campaign event in Racine, Wis., Obama said, "He is going to be a major voice in the Democratic party for years to come, and I want him involved and partnering with me in moving this country forward."

The report says that the two men hugged at the end of the meeting. (They know this how?) That doesn't sound too good for Hillary Clinton, does it?

John Brummett has been writing about Bill and Hillary Clinton for quite some time. He's even authored a book about the Clinton presidency. And he both expects and dreads a Clinton comeback. He points out that the Clinton's political obituary has been written over and over and over. And yet, they manage to come back on the fourth and long situations. 

So let me try to give them some encouragement: Hillary lives by three factors, mainly.

One is that the imminent slowdown in the pace of primaries or caucuses will temper Obama's streak and give her a chance to get up from the mat and dust herself off. A movement needs to keep moving, and the reduced pace of events will decelerate the Barack surge.

There will be only Wisconsin and Hawaii for Hillary to lose next week, most likely. Then there'll be a two-week respite before she puts everything on the line in Ohio and Texas, where, still, demographics and odds are in her favor.

The second factor is something one of the talking heads said smartly Tuesday night. It's that the stirring outcomes from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia made Obama the clear front-runner. It's that we can now expect a period of buyer's remorse, or at least reconsideration. Obama's experience, his readiness, his fitness to weather Republican attacks — look for worries about those to start crossing the minds of Democrats yet to vote.

The third is that Hillary surely can and will help with that. She now needs to attack, in part by saying Democrats need a tough candidate who can and will go to war against the Republicans.

He strongly advises protective gear for Obama in the upcoming debates. Hillary is going to go after him hard and -  given her history and well-known skills - not all the shots will conform to Marquess of Queensbury rules, so to speak.  

Barack Obama's campaign is outspending Hillary Clinton by a 4-to-1 margin on television ads in Wisconsin. 

Barack Obama is outspending Hillary Clinton by a better than 4-to-1 margin on TV ads in the state's top two media markets, according to reports viewed by WisPolitics Friday.

According to the reports, Obama has spent $831,880 on TV ads through Tuesday's primary in Madison and Milwaukee. Clinton has spent $180,990.

Obama, who went up on the air in Wisconsin five days before Clinton, has spent $506,870 on the four network affiliates in the Milwaukee market, which is home to the state's largest African American population. Obama has held a significant edge over Clinton among black voters in recent primaries and caucuses.

Obama has spent $325,010 on the four network affiliates in the Madison market, according to the reports.

Clinton has also spent the bulk of her money in the Milwaukee market, purchasing $117,795 worth of ads there. She has spent $63,195 in the Madison market.

There is a lot of money in play. This also helps point out why Hillary Clinton is now going to begin echoing John McCain's attack on Obama for refusing to accept public funding (and thus spending limits). This is funny on so many levels. Frankly, I agree with the Washington Post editorial that pointed out that it is better for democracy if the candidates accept public funding and spending limits. They will spend less time courting money and making promises to donors that way.

David Warren points out that two Japanese researchers have calculated out the sacrifices necessary to reach the carbon emission goal stated at the G-8 summit. Their conclusion: a modest 88% of the North American emissions would have to be cut off. 

So which part of the economy would you like to shut down? 

The 88 per cent is the figure for North America. The Europeans get off relatively easily: they only have to shut down 83 per cent of their economy; the Japanese 85 per cent. Only 35 per cent of the Chinese economy will have to go. And good news for India, much of which is still living in the Arcadian low-carbon past. The Indians get to gun their carbon emissions by 137 per cent over the next four decades.

With the insouciance of a charming zombie, Mr. Kanie added that he did not think the goal out of reach. "I think it is a matter of changing lifestyle and not necessarily in an austere way," he said. "For example, I often ride my bike instead of driving a car." He thought the government should provide more bicycle infrastructure.

Thank you for that suggestion, Mr. Kanie. After an incident I witnessed on the street the other day, I myself wish to be rid of cars. And after another incident on the street the day after, I would also like to be rid of bicycles: so I can go Mr Kanie one better.

And let me add a brilliant suggestion, all of my own. I have often thought that the world's food consumption — and all the extravagantly CO2-emitting factory and transport infrastructure that supports it — could be reduced by more than half, if we would just stop eating on odd-numbered days. I say "more than half" because, as I recall in Lent, people's appetites decline with reduced food consumption, so they'll tend to eat less on the even-numbered days, too. The scheme would also eliminate over a billion people now living at subsistence levels.

Warren adds that he is being sarcastic with that last suggestion. But of course, there are people who are actually advocating along those lines. So, which 88% will be selected to be eliminated? And who chooses?

Evan Thomas describes the complicated relationship between the media and the Clintons. In fact, the relationship between the press and any president or presidential candidate. Thomas says that the press had stormy relations with the Clintons early on in Bill Clinton's presidency. 

If Hillary Clinton loses the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, it is a good bet that she, or her minions, will cast a measure of blame on the press. Bill Clinton has already started making excuses, complaining that the media has given Obama a free ride. Though Hillary handed out chocolate Valentines to members of her traveling press corps, any embers of romance between the former First Lady and the Fourth Estate have long since died. It is also true, as Clinton spokesman Jay Carson tells NEWSWEEK, that the press is "obsessed" with Obama.

Nonetheless, the bad blood between the Clintonistas and the media has less to do with any personal failings of the Clintons themselves—or the foibles of individual reporters and editors—than it does with a poisonous, and predictable, dynamic between the press and presidents that goes back at least a half century. It's a good guess that the current media darlings, Obama and John McCain, will experience the fickleness of the press before too long.

The last president who liked and enjoyed reporters (some of them, anyway) was John F. Kennedy. Chief executives ever since have felt surrounded and beleaguered within months, if not days, of taking up residence in the White House. If they have seemed paranoid at times, it may be because they had real tormenters in the basement of the West Wing, ready to pounce on their hypocrisies. How presidents handle the ordeal of press coverage can be revealing of character. Some pretend to shrug it off better than others. The Clintons have been theatrical in their resentments and aggressive about pushing back. But in the realm of press relations, the most important difference between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama or John McCain is that she has lived for eight years in the White House and they have not.

The estrangement between presidents and the press is particularly painful because the relationship often begins as a love affair. The press swooned over the young Bill Clinton. Many reporters and pundits, tired of 12 years of Reagan-Bush, saw Clinton, only 45 when he began his run in 1991, as a fellow baby boomer who was going to rejuvenate and make more realistic and relevant the liberalism of the 1960s. They learned to put up with "Saturday Night Bill" when, on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, some tapes surfaced of Clinton sweet-talking a woman—not his wife—named Gennifer Flowers. But by the summer of 1992, the romance with the press was back in full bloom. The week of the Democratic convention, NEWSWEEK ran a cover showing a vibrant Bill and his running mate, Al Gore, under the line YOUNG GUNS. (At the Republican convention in August, NEWSWEEK put President George H.W. Bush on the cover with his dog Millie. DOG DAYS, read the headline.) Clinton's presidential honeymoon was over almost before it began. The White House stumbled in ways that now seem minor and forgettable—by, for instance, nominating as attorney general a woman, Zoë Baird, who had hired illegal aliens as nannies and chauffeurs for her kids. The press clucked and thundered. THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING PRESIDENT was Time's cover line in June 1993. NEWSWEEK's cover showed a picture of Clinton looking haggard, and asked WHAT'S WRONG?

I think the press has been considerably easier on the Clintons than they would have been on a Republican who acted in exactly the same way as the Clintons have. But that's beside the point. Thomas is quite correct that the media sees it as its job - its very reason for existence, in fact - to tear down whoever holds the Oval Office. Call it the press as political opposition, regardless of who sits in the White House.

Has Obama gotten a free ride? Well, yes. Has McCain? Well, sort of. Have the press really gone after Clinton? Not hardly. There have been some shots, but they were mostly pulled punches, delivered then forgotten. But the press will surely turn a more critical eye on Obama eventually - it is in their very nature.

Britain's National Health Service has a safe, effective treatment to save the vision of a person afflicted with macular degeneration. And, as one World War Two veteran found out, they will be happy to treat the condition.

After the victim loses the sight in one eye completely.

Doctors have launched an internet campaign to shame Gordon Brown over a war hero who has been told he will have to go blind in one eye before he will get NHS treatment.

More than 100 GPs have sent £5 cheques to Downing Street, made out to the Prime Minister, which they want to be put towards the cost of a cure for Second World War pilot Jack Tagg.

Mr Tagg, 88, suffers from "wet" macular degeneration, the main cause of sight loss in Britain, affecting a quarter of a million people. It can lead to blindness in as little as three months - but with prompt treatment it can be reversed.

Now he and his wife Gabrielle, 77, are selling their house to pay for an £11,000 course of injections.

Last week, Mr Tagg was told by a consultant at Torbay District General Hospital in Torquay that a course of injections of the Lucentis drug could save his sight.

But at £760 a shot, for a course of between three and 14 injections, he was told that under Government guidelines it was regarded as "too expensive" unless he was already blind in one eye.

Mr Tagg, who was a member of the RAF Balloon Command during the war and flew Wellington bombers, went for his first privately-funded injections on Friday.

He said: "I am selling up under protest. If I have to go for the full treatment it will end up costing me about &£11,000." 

An eye for a shot, so to speak. Tagg served Britain in her time of need but now must sacrifice an eye to the state as well in order to receive his "free" medical treatment. Still think socialized medicine is a good idea? What will you have to sacrifice for your "free" health care?

In a move that has stunned even some of his Democratic party allies, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer is proposing the taxation of illegal drugs. His plan calls for illegal drug dealers to purchase tax stamps to affix to the bags of drugs. No, really, he is proposing this. While a surprisingly large number of states have illegal drug taxation laws on the books, they are meant as enforcement tools since it is often easier to get a tax evasion conviction. (Think about how the Federal government got Al Capone.) Spitzer, however, is proposing this as a revenue tool only.

NEW YORK — If you can't beat it, tax it.

That seems to be the axiom in New York these days, where Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer (D), struggling to close a $4.4 billion budget gap, has proposed making drug dealers pay tax on their stashes of illegal drugs. The new tax would apply to cocaine, heroin and marijuana, and could be paid with pre-bought "tax stamps" affixed to the bags of dope.

Some critics in the legislature are asking what the governor has been smoking.

"I guess if it moves, he'll tax it," said Republican state Sen. Martin J. Golden, who dubbed the proposal "the crack tax." Some opponents said that because cocaine and weed would be subject to the new levies, it should more aptly be called "the crack-pot tax."

"How do I explain to my 16-year-old son that we're giving a certain legitimacy to marijuana, cocaine and heroin?" asked Golden, a former New York City police officer who represents a Brooklyn district. "We are taxing an illegal substance." He added, "Is prostitution next?"

On the other side of the aisle, some Democrats, too, were stunned by the plan. "My initial instinct is: I don't understand it," said Bill Perkins, a state senator from Harlem. "Most of the dealers I'm familiar with are petty crack dealers — most of them are crackheads. They are broke, to say the least. I just don't understand how you impose a tax" on broke crackheads, he said.

Taxing illegal drugs is more widespread than is generally known. At least 21 states have some form of tax for illicit drugs, although some of those laws have been challenged in courts, and others have fallen into disuse. Almost all the remaining drug-tax laws are used mainly by local law enforcement agencies as a way to seize drug money and fund counter-narcotics operations.

The controversial idea grew out of the efforts to fight bootleggers such as Al Capone during Prohibition — going after the bootleggers for unpaid taxes often required a lighter burden of proof than a criminal prosecution. Taxing illicit drugs gained popularity during the 1980s and early 1990s, when prosecutors and law enforcement authorities were pushing for mandatory sentences and other measures to signal a crackdown on drugs and drug use.  

Courts in Massachusetts and Tennessee have recently struck down their state illegal drug taxation laws as unconstitutional. While experts believe the taxation laws are relatively effect enforcement tools, no other state is attempting to use them as a revenue tool. Spitzer is claiming that the law would raise some $13 million in the first year. Yet in those states that do have similar programs, no drug dealers actually buy the stamps.