Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing

Or Rubber Ducky, You're The One. One shudders to think of the offspring that might result from this mating. It just isn't natural, a frog with a crush on a plastic duck ….

Caught in the slimy embrace of an over-excited and mightily confused frog, this plastic duck looks as though it's desperate to escape.

The frog's misguided sexual antics were photographed by Mike Coleman, 49, in his garden pond.

The father-of-two, of Hexham, Northumberland, said: “I just happened to look out to the garden pond and I saw the yellow duck bobbing about on the surface.

“I thought, 'Whatever is going on there?'

"I went to have a look and it was clear the frog had gone a bit barmy and was trying to mate with the duck.

"I managed to get a photo while it was still clamped onto the duck."

Yes you did, capturing the romantic amphibian and his very surprised looking consort in mid-embrace. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. These interspecies - or interspecies and hydrocarbon construct - matters are delicate. Is society ready for amphibian-plastic hybrids?

Oh, wait. There is Michael Jackson, isn't there? Carry on. 

A Must Read - Really

An astonishing read from David Mamet the playwright, screenwriter and author in The Village Voice. Mamet reveals his awakening to the fact that he has been wrong - badly wrong - for many years. He does it with wit and grace - I think this is one of the best pieces I have read in some time. 

I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bullshit and go straight to firearms.

I found not only that I didn't trust the current government (that, to me, was no surprise), but that an impartial review revealed that the faults of this president—whom I, a good liberal, considered a monster—were little different from those of a president whom I revered.

Bush got us into Iraq, JFK into Vietnam. Bush stole the election in Florida; Kennedy stole his in Chicago. Bush outed a CIA agent; Kennedy left hundreds of them to die in the surf at the Bay of Pigs. Bush lied about his military service; Kennedy accepted a Pulitzer Prize for a book written by Ted Sorenson. Bush was in bed with the Saudis, Kennedy with the Mafia. Oh.

Yeah, there's a word that violates the policy I have here at the Crabitat in that excerpt. I think that should tell regular readers how strongly I feel about this piece by Mamet. It is brilliantly written and will, undoubtedly, get Mamet dropped from a number of party invitation lists. Please take the time to read it.

The Great White North Rage

And no, it has nothing to do with race - other than a race for the few available parking spots. No, it is about the increasing incidence of "snow rage" in Canada. They have had so much snow that people are fighting about it. In fact, they are pulling guns - both real and plastic ones - on one another over snow and parking spaces.

Recent Canadian winters have been mild but this one looks set to break all-time records for snow. One storm last weekend dumped 23 inches (51 cm) on the capital Ottawa and 19 inches on Quebec City, which has already received 210 inches this year.

Quebec City police said they had been called to a dozen violent disputes about snow from one property ending up on someone else's. The drifts outside some houses are 12 feet and higher.

Last Sunday, a man in an upscale Quebec City neighbourhood became so upset a woman from a snow removal service was putting snow on his yard that he shouted at her and then took a shovel and hit the window of the vehicle she was driving.

"The woman apologized and returned to work … a bit later the man opened his garage door and emerged with a shotgun, pointed it at the ground and looked at her in a threatening way," said police spokeswoman Catherine Viel.

Police arrested the man, who will be charged with negligent use of a firearm, and seized a total of 13 weapons from his home. Viel said snow-related fights were unusually common.

In other words, Quebec has received 17 and a half feet of snow this winter - so far. Forecasters are calling for even more snow to fall in the next few days. (The temperature is also notably below the seasonal norm.) Montreal, meanwhile, has a snow pile that is more than 80 feet high. Officials are warning that if something is not done to disperse the pile soon, it will not melt before next winter begins. 

Vaclav Klaus On Freedom

Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic has been speaking out loudly on a subject he knows a great deal about: freedom and lack thereof. He see the climate alarmists and their grand claims and plans for mankind a greater threat than the possibility of global warming. 

I recently looked at the European CO2 emissions data covering the period 1990-2005, the Kyoto protocol era. You don't need huge computer models to very easily distinguish three different types of countries in Europe.

In the less developed countries, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, which during this period were trying to catch up with the economic performance of the more developed EU countries, rapid economic growth led to a 53 per cent increase in CO2 emissions. In the post-communist countries, which went through a radical economic restructuring with the heavy industry disappearing, GDP drastically declined. These countries decreased their CO2 emissions in the same period by 32 per cent. In the EU's slow-growing if not stagnating countries (excluding Germany where its difficult to eliminate the impact of the fact that the east German economy almost ceased to exist in that period) CO2 emissions increased by 4 per cent.

The huge differences in these three figures are fascinating. And yet there is a dream among European politicians to reduce CO2 emissions for the entire EU by 30 per cent in the next 13 years compared to the 1990 level.

What does it mean? Do they assume that all countries would undergo a similar economic shock as was experienced by the central and eastern European countries after the fall of communism? Do they assume that economically weaker countries will stop their catching-up process? Do they intend to organise a decrease in the number of people living in Europe? Or do they expect a technological revolution of unheard-of proportions?

What I see in Europe, the US and other countries is a powerful combination of irresponsibility and wishful thinking together with the strong belief in the possibility of changing the economic nature of things through a radical political project.

The above link is to an excerpt from the speech Klaus just gave at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. The entire speech is available at his website. 

The true believers are demanding incredible, totalitarian control on humanity. Better start thinking folks. The road to serfdom is being paved right now.

Various Democratic Implosions

Well, the big news today is that Eliot "Client 9" Spitzer, who made many hookers happy with his free-flowing funds, is now a former governor. His career implosion was short but spectacular. On another front, Geraldine Ferraro's career as a Hillary Clinton advisor has just come to a somewhat lower-key end after her genuinely stupid comments about Barack Obama. 

In a letter to Clinton obtained by CNN's Suzanne Malveaux — who spoke with the former vice presidential candidate shortly after she sent it to Clinton — Ferraro said she is stepping down so, "I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign."

Full letter:

Dear Hillary –

I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign.

The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won't let that happen……

Actually, I think they had every right to take exception to the frankly asinine comments of Ferraro. Just as Clinton's staffers took exception to one of Obama's advisors calling Hillary a monster. There are some things one cannot get away with in politics. Private citizens and even pundits have much more latitude than politicians - or staffers - do. 

The Democrats are tap dancing in a minefield of their own making. Playing identity politics for so long has left them with very little safe ground anymore.

Public Wants Spitzer Gone

A new poll of New York residents says that a vast majority want Eliot Spitzer out of the governors office. And they are willing to have him removed if he won't go on his own. 

A poll released late Tuesday found that 70 percent of New Yorkers think Spitzer should resign, while 66 percent believe he should be impeached and removed from office if he doesn't.

"It's a big thumbs down," said Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion, which conducted the poll. "It points to just how politically untenable his position is right now."

Those are some bleak numbers. Kinky Eliot better be negotiating for his plea bargain fast - he's running out of time. The voters want him to go away.