Blue Crab Boulevard

I've read about Bob Geldof for many years - longer than I have read news about George W. Bush. I had a portrait of Geldof in my mind that had been painted through the years by press reports on him. I did not think badly of him, mind you, I just had a mental picture. Sometimes you find that a mental picture is wrong. I think Bob Geldof found that his mental picture of George W. Bush was wrong when he accompanied Bush across Africa. I know I found out that my mental picture of Geldof was wrong when I read what he wrote about that trip. He is not the one-domensional figure I imagined him to be. Neither is Bush the person Geldof thought he was.

I think it would be best that I not excerpt this one. Read it for yourself and see if maybe some rearrangement of your personal mental picture gallery is in order. It is worth reading.

UPDATE: I found this item over at Memeorandum . But it has been hit by a number of other bloggers today. The Anchoress, Captain's Quarters (and I did not read his post until after I had posted mine - but boy, the titles are similar) and a bunch of others have blogged this:  JustOneMinute, UrbanGrounds, Little Green Footballs, Sound Politics, Don Surber, Commentary, Brutally Honest, 

I have to tell you, I read this piece from the Washington Post with disbelief. You see, it is an op-ed from Angelina Jolie  that appears to be arguing for a continued American presence in Iraq.

In Baghdad, I spoke with Army Gen. David Petraeus about UNHCR's need for security information and protection for its staff as they re-enter Iraq, and I am pleased that he has offered that support. General Petraeus also told me he would support new efforts to address the humanitarian crisis "to the maximum extent possible" — which leaves me hopeful that more progress can be made.

UNHCR is certainly committed to that. Last week while in Iraq, High Commissioner António Guterres pledged to increase UNHCR's presence there and to work closely with the Iraqi government, both in assessing the conditions required for return and in providing humanitarian relief.

During my trip I also met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has announced the creation of a new committee to oversee issues related to internally displaced people, and a pledge of $40 million to support the effort.

My visit left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis.

Today's humanitarian crisis in Iraq — and the potential consequences for our national security — are great. Can the United States afford to gamble that 4 million or more poor and displaced people, in the heart of Middle East, won't explode in violent desperation, sending the whole region into further disorder?

What we cannot afford, in my view, is to squander the progress that has been made. In fact, we should step up our financial and material assistance. UNHCR has appealed for $261 million this year to provide for refugees and internally displaced persons. That is not a small amount of money — but it is less than the U.S. spends each day to fight the war in Iraq. I would like to call on each of the presidential candidates and congressional leaders to announce a comprehensive refugee plan with a specific timeline and budget as part of their Iraq strategy.

As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I asked the troops if they wanted to go home as soon as possible, they said that they miss home but feel invested in Iraq. They have lost many friends and want to be a part of the humanitarian progress they now feel is possible.

It seems to me that now is the moment to address the humanitarian side of this situation. Without the right support, we could miss an opportunity to do some of the good we always stated we intended to do. 

Of course, Jolie is correct. We really cannot abandon the Iraqi people from either a moral standpoint or from the standpoint of America's best interests. (Which has been my position all along.) What I am wondering - and believe me, I mean no disrespect to Ms. Jolie - is if this is a trial balloon of sorts. Is this how the vehemently anti-war left and the Hollywood hangers-on are planning to reverse all the past antipathy to American policy? Is this just one Hollywood star breaking from the group think and seeing the reality or is this the opening movement of a new chorus.

I'll give Jolie the benefit of the doubt here, because the op-ed does, genuinely, sound sincere. But if the messiah of the left begins saying the same things, how will the nutroots react? How they react will say a lot about their real convictions.

There has been a large explosion at a shopping mall in the Chicago suburb of Waukegan. At least six people have been taken to the hospital. Windows were blown out an parts of the roof have fallen in. The cause of the blast is not known at this time.

WAUKEGAN, Ill. (AP) — A large explosion has blown the top off a shopping plaza in Waukegan, Ill. Police say at least six people have been taken to a hospital.

The explosion struck around lunchtime Thursday. It blew the windows out of storefronts and collapsed the ceilings above stores.

Witness Candi Rixie was taking orders at a sandwich shop a block away. She said she felt a rumble, almost like somebody hit the building with a car.

It wasn't immediately clear what caused the blast, but crews from People's Gas were on the scene to investigate.

Fire crews from several towns have come to help in rescue efforts, and are searching to see if people are trapped inside.

I'll update as the story develops.  

Has CBS aired a story that is completely fabricated? Quite possibly.

The chairman of the Alabama Republican Party sent a letter to "60 Minutes" producers asking for a retraction unless they could provide evidence backing up a segment on former Gov. Don Siegelman's prosecution- Birmingham News.

This letter to "60 Minutes" was posted today at Blogs For Victory.
Via LGF Quick Links:

Dear Mr. Pelley,

    Last Sunday, you aired a piece on "60 Minutes" that I consider a broad, frontal and unfair attack on our Republican president, his one-time top advisor, Alabama’s Republican Governor and our party, in general.

    The report included an interview with a small town attorney, Dana Jill Simpson, who outrageously claimed that Karl Rove asked her to take explicit photos of Don Siegelman having improper extra-marital relations with “an aide” in 2001. Her interview with "60 Minutes" was the first time her newest charge appeared, despite her having testified for several hours before a committee of the U.S. Congress, and was the first time she claimed having met with Mr. Rove.

    Most importantly, neither Dana Jill Simpson, nor your story or your network provided one shred of evidence that her charges had any merit or kernel of truth.

    In contrast, the Wednesday, February 27, edition of the Birmingham News printed an interview with Mr. Rove in which he vehemently denies Simpson’s charges and expresses deep frustration in "60 Minutes" failure to obtain evidence of any relationship between them before airing such an explosive story. He further denies knowing Simpson, meeting or speaking with her or even having knowledge of the Siegelman prosecution beyond what he learned from traditional media coverage…

    Given the serious nature of the charges, and the fact that 60 Minutes’ reputation as a reliable news source is once again at stake, I am asking that you publicly produce any evidence that was provided to you which substantiates Simpson’s claims…

There's quite a lot more, including the fact that the Alabama Republican party can find no record whatsoever of this person ever having worked for them. Bob Owens is all over this one as well.  Mac's Mind has the video of Rove denying ever even meeting the accuser.

Want to freshen up the air and drive away unpleasant people at the same time? Use a can of Oust on the criminal elements! That's precisely what Margaret Taylor, a British postmistress did.

Air freshener is good at getting rid of unpleasant smells but a postmistress managed to clear the room of gun-wielding robbers when she grabbed a can of Oust and sprayed the raiders in the face.

Postal worker Margaret Taylor fought off two men who burst into her post office waving a gun and a knife.

The 42-year-old picked up a bottle of Oust - which claims to do "more than just eliminate odours" - and sprayed the raiders in the face.

The fumes proved too much for the balaclava-wearing robbers and they ran out and jumped into a car.

The incident, in Hyde, Greater Manchester, was captured on CCTV and one of the robbers, described by witnesses as "past his prime", was heard shouting "Wait for me, Pete".

Manager Martin Cronshaw, 54, said his wife Sue had had a gun held to her head in a previous attack and another time he was attacked with a samurai sword which sliced through his hand.

Doctors fought for five hours to save his thumb, but despite this, Mr and Mrs Cronshaw are determined not to be beaten.

Mr Cronshaw said: "We have been held up five times in eight years and although this was not as bad as on previous occasions when the robbers were more determined, we had to feel sorry for the people in the shop.

"But this is our business and sadly this kind of thing is the way of the world now." 

Who knew crimefighting could smell so nice? There is a substantial reward being offered for the arrest of the clean, fresh-scented criminals. The police should be able to sniff them out. 

Definitely a lot more than two. A man is in the hospital in serious condition after being swarmed by very angry bees. While a television news crew was filming a story about the earlier attacks (a woman had also been a victim of the enraged insects) another guy got swarmed. The crew caught that later attack on video.

Having been swarmed by bees years ago while hiking in the Adirondacks, I can assure you it is no fun. They pulled a lot of stingers out of me in the infirmary and I was sick for three days afterwards. (Dunno if its related or not, but I also happen to now be allergic to wasps - which is also no fun.)

A spokesman for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, known in the industry as NERC, says that the Outages in Florida would have been a lot worse had major changes to the grid not been made in the wake of the 2003 Northeast blackout. 

MIAMI — The power outage that left 1.2 million Florida homes and businesses in the dark Tuesday could have been worse without emergency measures adopted after the disastrous Northeast blackout of 2003, a power industry official said.

Numerous systems failed during the blackout, which left two nuclear power plants closed and knocked out traffic lights in dozens of communities.

"It wasn't just one thing that went wrong," said Stanley Johnson, manager of Situation Awareness and Infrastructure Security for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, which oversees the U.S. power grid system. "In a sense, it's like the Challenger (space shuttle that exploded in 1986)."

The good news, Johnson said, is that power industry upgrades made after the 2003 Northeast blackout prevented the outage from cascading even farther into northern Florida and other states. That outage, the worst in U.S. history, left 50 million without power.

While largely hitting south Florida, Tuesday's outage cut a wide swath, shutting down power as far south as the Keys, north to Daytona Beach and west to Tampa.

Service was restored to all customers within hours. But two nuclear reactors that shut down during the outage as a safety precaution remain out of service, said April Schilpp, spokeswoman for Florida Power & Light.

The utility is also working to determine why the outages spread so widely. Johnson said probes by the electric reliability group and the Florida Reliability Coordinating Council could last weeks or months as officials use computer models to re-enact events.

As is usual in one of these stories, they get key details wrong in the sequence of events that they do know so far. They use voltage and current interchangeably - the two words are not. Here's a simple explanation of the two. 

The Politico points out something today that people need to read. Barack Obama is actually getting boosts in his popularity with every insult he shrugs off and accepts apologies for.

AUSTIN —They are so sorry.

In the course of the primary campaign, and perhaps in a preview of the fall election drama, Senator Barack Obama has accepted the apologies of three United States senators, a former senator, CNN and various lower-level supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton.

Most of them have apologized for saying something insensitive about Obama’s race, his name, or his heritage. And the dynamic of outrage and offense this campaign has proved race to be a much touchier subject than gender. At times, Obama’s campaign has sought to downplay burgeoning outrage. At others, he’s stoked it for political advantage.

But most of the flaps ended the same way: With Obama forgiving the alleged offender. Sometimes he’s accepted the apologies graciously, sometimes sternly, but always in line with his message. And that message of reconciliation – often explicitly racial reconciliation – is a central part of his campaign’s appeal. With a general election that appears likely to open him to more Republican attacks, and more line-crossing, the campaign ritual of offense and forgiveness appears likely to be repeated often this year.

This is exactly why I wrote that earlier post about Obama's middle name. This is the trap people are falling into. The only way to win a rigged game is to refuse to play. The media is going to blow up everything they can possibly construe (or even misconstrue) as an insult into a major issue, bet on it. 

Refuse to play, folks.

Incidentally, comments are still turned on but are under full moderation, meaning every comment must be approved individually by the massive staff here at the Crabitat. Hence, it might be a while before your comment gets vetted.

Even the Los Angeles Times can't stomach the Democratic candidates glaring hypocrisy on NAFTA and free trade. They are throwing the flag on this one.

The 14-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement has become a hot issue in this year's Democratic presidential campaign — in Ohio, at least. When Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama hit the hustings in the Buckeye State, they compete to be NAFTA’s biggest critic. But when they jet to Texas, which is also holding its primary Tuesday, the candidates have little or nothing to say about the pact.

The disparity illustrates two truths about major trade deals: They're a magnet for pandering, and they produce both winners and losers. Ohio, like other states in the Rust Belt, is stinging from the loss of manufacturing jobs in the years since NAFTA took effect. In Texas, however, communities near the border have blossomed with an influx of investment, jobs and workers.

And the differences haven't just been regional. The trade deals signed since 1980 have helped spur job growth for some types of workers while decreasing jobs for others. Men at the high and low ends of the career ladder have benefited, but those in the middle have suffered, while the opposite holds true for women, according to a recent study by economist Stephen Rose at the Progressive Policy Institute.

The president's job is to take the long view of what's best for the country as a whole. Although it's hard to pinpoint jobs lost or created because of NAFTA, U.S. employment has grown far beyond even pessimistic estimates of the trade deal's costs. You wouldn't know that listening to Obama, who declared in a recent speech that "trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage." His stance is echoed by Clinton, who scolded Obama's campaign for distributing a flier that said she had called NAFTA a "boon" to the economy.

They have a bunch of links backing up their statements. They point out that fighting for truly open markets in other countries is more productive. Yes, some jobs are going to be lost with free trade - but better, higher paying jobs also are gained. Rising standards in other countries mean more opportunities to sell the products of those better jobs here at home.

Bobby Jindal, the new Republican governor of Louisiana, is proving that cleaning up government is possible. He has rammed sweeping ethics rules changes through a reluctant legislature and has even managed to extract praise from the New York Times in doing so.

BATON ROUGE, La. — Downstairs, legislators gnashed their teeth, while upstairs at the Capitol here this week, the new governor claimed victory against the old customs down below.

Six weeks into the term of Gov. Bobby Jindal, an extensive package of ethics bills was approved here this week, signaling a shift in the political culture of a state proud of its brazen style. Mr. Jindal, the earnest son of Indian immigrants, quickly declared open season on the cozy fusion of interests and social habits that have prevailed among lobbyists, state legislators and state agencies here for decades. Mostly, he got what he wanted.

Mr. Jindal, an outsider to that rollicking if sometimes unsavory banquet, a Republican with a missionary’s zeal to smite Louisiana’s wickedness at one of its presumed sources, called on the Legislature to reform itself and its high-living ways.

Grudgingly, pushed by public opinion and business pressure, it went along. When the legislative session ended Tuesday, lawmakers had passed bills aimed at making their finances less opaque, barring their lucrative contracts with the state — some have been known to do good business with them — and cutting down on perks like free tickets to sporting events. The bills, which advocates say will put Louisiana in the top tier of states with tough ethics rules, now await Mr. Jindal’s signature, which should come early next week.

Mr. Jindal overcame resistance by convincing lawmakers that no job growth would occur in the state until it cleaned up its act and brought its ethics laws into the national mainstream.

“I’ve talked to C.E.O.’s in New York, even the president of the United States,” Mr. Jindal said in an interview, and when “you ask them for more investment, more help on the coast and other areas, their first reaction always is: ‘Well, who do you need to know? Who do I have to hire? Is this money going to end up in somebody’s pocket?’ ”

That had to change, the governor said, and he was using his “narrow window” — his honeymoon at the Capitol — to do it.

The volume of grumbling suggested real change was afoot.

“This is huge,” said D. W. Hunt, a veteran lobbyist at the Capitol. “This is a sea change. This will seriously, dramatically change things. The meta-theme is the transparency.”

Barry Erwin, president of the Council for a Better Louisiana, a good-government watchdog group, described the new bills as “a major change in the culture.”

“It’s a world of difference, particularly on the disclosure side, and the same thing with conflict-of-interest,” he said. 

Louisiana has long had a reputation for utter corruption in politics. Change is long overdue. Too bad he can't take this show on the road - there are other states that could benefit from this kind of change (Illinois comes to mind). Jindal did not get everything he wanted, he was unable to strip convicted politicians of state benefits. But it is a start - a big one - toward draining Louisiana's political swamp. Or bayou, if you prefer.