Paranoia Strikes Deep….

…into your life it will creep. The Daily Mail reports on a, shall we say, breathess report from the New Scientist (which could better be described as the Old Conspiracy Theorist, but we digress).

It sounds like the stuff of science fiction - beetles, rats and sharks turned into cunning spies courtesy of a brain implant or two.

But such scenarios are fast moving from fantasy to fact, with laboratories around the world hatching a new breed of spy.

Moths, beetles, rats, pigeons and sharks have been installed with electrodes, batteries and even video cameras in an attempt to create the ultimate spook.

This week's New Scientist reports: "The next time a moth lands on your window sill, watch what you say.

"It may look like an innocent visitor, irresistibly drawn to the light in your room, but it could actually be a spy - one of a new generation of cyborg insects with implants wired into their nerves to allow remote control of their movement.

"Be warned, flesh-and-blood bugs may soon live up to their name."

And less than half a century ago they were promising hovercars. Damn them. The man keeping us down all over again, man. As usual, the New Scientist has it all wrong. We here at Blue Crab Boulevard have had this technology for ages.

Mud Slung

Well, Barack Obama is going on the offensive. The mud is flying by the bucketful.

(CNN) – Barack Obama's campaign took fresh aim at Hillary Clinton Wednesday for refusing to release her tax returns, asking in a memo circulated to reporters, "What does Clinton have to hide?"

"In the face of her unwillingness to release her tax returns, Hillary Clinton has made the false case in this campaign that she is more electable because she has been fully vetted," the memo stated. "When it comes to her personal finances, Senator Clinton’s refusal to release her taxes returns denies the media and the American people the opportunity to even begin that process."

David Axelrod, the Obama campaign's chief strategist, also said in a conference call with reporters Wednesday that Clinton has a history of non-disclosure and is the least-vetted candidate in the presidential race.

Meanwhile, the media is now beginning to ask what, exactly, is up with Obama's connection to Tony Rezko:

Accused Illinois fixer Antoin "Tony" Rezko is in debt by $50 million and relies on "family" handouts of $7,500 a month to pay monthly costs, according to a previously sealed court transcript reviewed by ABC News.

Rezko's bleak financial picture raises the question of how the Rezkos were able to buy a vacant lot adjoining the home of Sen. Barack Obama in 2005, at a time Rezko says he was already in deep debt.

Rezko also reveals in the testimony, before Judge Amy St. Eve on Jan. 16, 2007, that he already knew he was under federal investigation at the time of the land purchase and had hired a criminal defense attorney to deal with the "feds."

So we have two candidates in a virtual dead heat, with virtually no way for either to secure the necessary delegates to lock the nomination and both may have financial shadiness to deal with.

Lordy. This is better than a soap opera, isn't it? Funniest outcome: both disintegrate before the convention and the Democrats are left with no candidate. The mayhem at the convention would be hilarious. Well, the Democrats wouldn't think so. Which would make the rest of us laugh harder. 

Dean: Take A Mulligan - Or Else

Howard Dean appears to have intervened in the dispute about the void Michigan and Florida delegates in a way that may favor Obama. He will not allow the party rules to be bent retroactively to seat the delegates. The states will either have to hold a do-over vote or submit to the credentials committee. In other words, Hillary Clinton does not get to count - or count on - those delegates without a bruising fight in either the committee or in the new Mulligan primaries. On the other hand, Obama isn't completely immunized. He is not shielded from those two state's delegates completely. 

Howard Dean will not bend the party rules to grandfather in the disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida, the Democratic party chairman said in a statement today.

Instead, he put the state parties on notice: either they can wait and allow the credentials committee to decide whether to seat their delegates, or submit to a re-vote sanctioned under DNC rules. "We look forward to receiving their proposals should they decide to submit new delegate selection plans and will review those plans at that time," he said in the statement.

"Everyone seems to be asking what the DNC will do," a Democrat close to Dean said. "But the question is: what will the state parties do."

Dean's statement implies that he has no intention of changing the rules to accommodate any solution proposed by the candidates or the state parties. There has been some suggestion that the two remaining presidential candidates might try to broker a deal among themselves. His line in the sand narrows the options for Hillary Clinton's campaign because it is unlikely that a credentials committee would endorse a delegation congenial to her mathematical interests.

Dean will make the rounds of the network morning news shows tomorrow to explain his reasoning.

Unless someone comes up with a way to fund the two do-overs, the point may be moot. But this ensures a brutal fight scenario one way or the other.

Dean isn't exactly pouring oil on the waters here. But he's splashing a goodly amount of gasoline on the fire. 

You Will Be severely Punished

A mayor of a small French town has issued a decree promising severe punishment for any citizen daring to die without a reservation.

I'm not kidding.

In an ordinance posted in the council offices, Mayor Gerard Lalanne told the 260 residents of the village of Sarpourenx that "all persons not having a plot in the cemetery and wishing to be buried in Sarpourenx are forbidden from dying in the parish."

It added: "Offenders will be severely punished."

We ere at Blue Crab Boulevard recommend the mayor impose the death penalty. Oh, wait. Well, then, Life in prison! Hmm. This is going to be tough. We have it! Put them in the ground and cover them with dirt!

That'll teach 'em. 

Quick Hits

Some things you might find interesting.

Brattleboro, Vermont, the town that can't keep clothes on its teenagers thinks it has the authority to order the arrest of the President and Vice President of the United States. 

One of the people who invented Dungeons and Dragons has died.  

The Washington Post notes Barack Obama's new problem: a costly two-front war against Hillary Clinton and John McCain. 

Another Day, Another Phony Oprah-Endorsed Memoir

This is amusing. Another Oprah Winfrey endorsed memoir (or endorsed by her magazine) has turned out to be a work of fiction. The book, purportedly by a biracial gang member was actually written by a well-off white woman and completely made up.

Publisher Riverhead Books was forced to recall 19,000 copies of the book yesterday after Seltzer admitted her gripping tale of running drugs for a South Central Los Angeles gang was a work of fiction.

"Riverhead is saddened by this turn of events," the publisher said in a statement. "We feel bad for our readers, Peggy and her family."

Oprah's magazine also backed off its praise. "While it was a great read, we now know that it should have been classified as fiction, rather than as a memoir, said Amy Gross, editor in chief.

"Love and Consequences" was the second memoir revealed as a hoax in the past week - the first came when author Misha Defonseca acknowledged that her 1997 book "Misha: A Memoir of the Holocaust Years" was a fake.

More memorably, author James Frey received a nationally broadcast, verbal spanking from Winfrey two years ago after admitting he invented or exaggerated sections of his best-selling memoir, "A Million Little Pieces." 

We've got to get cracking on our memoirs. We just need the correct hook and an endorsement from Oprah and we'll be in the money.

A Media Myth In The Making

The Associated Press is asking whether Hillary Clinton's uber-tippity-top-secret Saturday Night Live strategy was the thing that triggered all the sudden media scrutiny that may have dented Barack Obama's halo.

NEW YORK - Life imitating art or just a coincidence? A study of campaign coverage found the media took a sharper look at Barack Obama the week after "Saturday Night Live" spoofed journalists enthralled by his candidacy.

The NBC comedy show on Feb. 23 opened with a mock debate where journalists were rough on Hillary Clinton while being starry-eyed about Obama. It matched complaints the Clinton campaign had made — and she even referenced the comedy skit during a real debate last week.

During the week, Obama was the dominant person in 69 percent of presidential campaign stories, according to a study by Project for Excellence in Journalism. That's the biggest percentage one candidate had received in any week this year.

The story goes on to quote one of the study's directors as saying it was a bit difficult to attribute the skit with the sudden surge of critical coverage. Actually, there were a lot of pundits who were already questioning the media's fawning coverage of Obamania and I suspect a lot of editors were already very uncomfortable with their own work. Undoubtedly many of the stories that started turning over rocks had been in the works for quite some time. But you can bet that the media will be pointing to the SNL skit as the decisive turning point should Hillary win the nomination. It gives them a definitive thing to point to instead of a more nebulous series of events and decisions.

Many people have been pointing out that the media has been covering the horse race and not the issues. Many have been pointing out that the media's apparent unseemly fascination with The Great Left Hope was creepy to the point of bordering on cult-like. But that is more complicated than the single point in time the media prefers to use as a narrative. 

Talking Digital

The Washington Post has a story today about a digital change taking place at the Library of Congress in a little known service. Unless you have need of this service, which provides talking books to the blind and disabled free of charge, you have likely never heard of it.

Judith M. Dixon, a clinical psychologist by training and a sophisticated techie by avocation, is helping to lead the Library of Congress into the digital age.

Dixon, 55, who gave up university teaching 27 years ago to join the library's National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, is a key player on a team that has been working for the better part of a decade to create a new generation of audiobooks for the library's more than 700,000 registered blind and disabled users.

The goal is to make the digital format the backbone of the library's "talking book" program by transferring onto special digital flash drives the 60,000 titles that the library has on audiocassettes and giving patrons new machines on which to play them.

"The library system is here because free public library service is a basic tenet of our society," said Dixon, who is blind and navigates with the aid of a guide dog. "This program is providing access to people who would otherwise not have it."

Under the program, blind and disabled users may obtain audiobooks through the mail from any of the service's more than 130 regional libraries throughout the country. There is no charge for the books or the players, but to keep the machines, users must check out at least one book a year. The library plans to roll out the new machines and digital books by the end of the year. 

The service began in 1934 using LP records. The switch to cassettes started in the late 1960s but wasn't completed until well into the 1980s. This time the change will have to happen more quickly since the cassette format is already pretty much dead. The shame of this whole thing is that Congress cut the Library's funding request for this program to only $12.5 million for four years. The Library had asked for $19.1 million annually. As a result, far fewer talking books will be available. Shame on Congress. They manage to pork up every spending bill they pass but can't spare what doesn't even amount to pocket change out of the Federal budget for the blind and disabled.

A side note: Project Gutenberg along with AudioBooksForFree.com, LiteralSystems.org and Librivox are always looking for volunteers to record new, free of charge, audio books. 

Clinton Pulls It Off

Much to my surprise, CNN is now calling Hillary Clinton the winner in Ohio, the Texas primary and Rhode Island. The Texas caucuses are still undecided but the report at this hour puts Clinton narrowly ahead. Obama won Vermont by a large margin. On the Republican side, John McCain has now secured all the delegates needed for nomination by convincing margins.

 Sen. Hillary Clinton got her campaign back on track with projected wins in the Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island primaries.

Delegate-rich Texas and Ohio were considered must-wins for her campaign.

Obama, who claimed victory in Vermont, had won 12 straight contests since Super Tuesday on February 5.

Texas also held Democratic caucuses Tuesday, but it was too close to declare a winner.

"For everyone here in Ohio and across America who's been ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up — this one is for you," Clinton said before supporters in Columbus.

"You know what they say," she said. "As Ohio goes, so goes the nation. Well, this nation's coming back and so is this campaign."

Obama congratulated Clinton on her victories but downplayed his losses.

Obama at least lost more gracefully than Clinton has in the past. She never did congratulate Obama. Mike Huckabee has finally dropped his bid as a result of McCain's wins, something he frankly should have done a few weeks ago.

The Democrats are now set up for a bruising fight right up to their convention. It is all but mathematically uncertain that either candidate can win enough delegates to secure the nomination. It is going to get uglier than it has been already in the coming weeks. 

As for me,  I need a new crystal ball. I honestly thought Obama would win big. Instead, e was unable to seal the deal. May you live in interesting times.