The (Ugly) Birds

I've noticed for several years now that there seem to be more buzzards (properly, they are actually vultures) around of late. There have been a number of them flying around the Crabitat. Very large turkey vultures, the ugly ones with the red, featherless heads. According to the AP, there has been a rise in the numbers of the nasty creatures all over the country. And they have taken to taking live prey in some areas.

But their proliferation is making them unwelcome, from high-rises in Florida to ranches in Texas, denying them the respect they may deserve as Mother Nature's vacuum cleaners. Think roadkill.

"We'd have a lot more smelly dead bodies around the place if they weren't there to clean it up," Tizard said.

But Texas ranchers increasingly are telling wildlife authorities that black vultures — the more aggressive version of the two birds and reaching 25 inches in length with wingspans of 5 feet — are killing calves, lambs and young goats.

"They're prospering," said Tizard, who's studied birds for more than 40 years. "Clearly if they're killing cows that otherwise would live, that indeed is a cause for some significant concern."

City commissioners in Madisonville, about 100 miles north of Houston, gave their blessing in January to shooting vultures blamed for property damage as long as folks obtain the proper federal permits.

Vultures are protected under the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Just last month, officials in Barstow, Fla., moved to exclude them from protection on a local bird sanctuary island.

Randy Smith, a San Antonio-based biologist with the Texas Wildlife Services Program, said complaints about buzzards have soared.

"Ten years ago, it was a rarity, but it's pretty frequent nowadays," he said. "Usually we'll end up assisting the rancher. Nine times out of 10, we'll assist him getting a permit."

While the experts maintain that the increasingly large population of hungry vultures poses no danger to humans, I'd only point out one thing. (And this is not a joke, incidentally). The spot in my town where a large flock of the vultures is always circling is over the local retirement home. I'm not saying they would grab a senior citizen, mind you. But it does make you wonder.

An Ill Wind From Europe

Folks in London and many other areas of Britain are raising a stink over the smell of overripe manure wafting over them from Europe. Apparently, the foul aromas will continue for at least a couple more days until the winds shift.

LONDON, England (CNN) — A foul smell permeating London and parts of England over the past two days is due to farmers on the European continent spreading manure in their fields, forecasters and British farmers said Saturday.

The agricultural odor is inescapable in central London and smells vaguely of farmland or even garbage.

Forecasters said a stiff breeze from the east is carrying the smell across the North Sea from Belgium, the Netherlands and even Germany. They said the smell is likely to hang around through the weekend as the easterly wind continues.

"You can't say it's going to smell for two days, but the wind is coming in from the same direction," said Chris Almond, a forecaster with the Met Office, Britain's weather service.

"It's not really until Monday, Tuesday that we'll see a change in the wind direction, with a more marked improvement in air quality."

He said the smell had probably been stagnating in those countries for a few days, resulting in a more pungent aroma once the winds brought it to England.

The National Farmers' Union blamed the smell on the muck-spreading by Dutch farmers, who it said are banned from the practice in the winter and are now spreading it "en masse."

The British government is contemplating a similar ban on spreading manure in winter. So the problem could be even worse in the very near future. We do have one small question about the manure-spreading ban, however: will that also apply to politicians and bureaucrats?

If so, we favor it.

Summit Down Under

Two completely different views of the just-completed "ideas summit" held by Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The Associated Press takes the glowing report route:

ADELAIDE, Australia (AP) — A free-spirited summit aimed at soliciting innovative ideas to strengthen Australia's future concluded Sunday with wide-ranging proposals, from developing a cure for blindness to a health agency funded by a junk food tax.

Some 1,000 experts, activists, politicians and celebrities put forward more than 40 proposals after two days of brainstorming.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has promised to respond by the end of the year, but there is no guarantee any of the ideas will be implemented. Rudd praised the event as "a very Australian gathering."

"I think the reason it's worked … is because it's been characterized by a whole lot of good humor, a whole lot of mutual respect, and a whole lot of very classical, undeniable Australian directness," Rudd said.

One group proposed the development of a bionic eye, a so-called "cure" for blindness. The proposal is part of a drive to promote research and translate that research into commercial and clinical benefits.

Other ideas included the establishment of an Aboriginal treaty that would detail their status and rights, establishing a national "carbon bank" to monitor the nation's greenhouse gas emissions and boosting Australian television content.

The first-of-its-kind summit has been touted by the ruling Labour government as a way to harvest the best ideas for the future from Australians across the nation and include regular citizens in the governing process.

But critics have derided the gathering for trying to cover too much ground in too little time, and some delegates complained Sunday that their ideas were not being heard.

Meanwhile, Tim Blair has been rounding up somewhat less rosy coverage of the festivities:

UPDATE XVII. Ruddlers in space! Summiteer Joshua Gans has Martian plans:

I decided to get more ambitious and put forward that perhaps our goal should be to put an Australian on Mars by 2020. When queried about the cost, I elaborated that it was not part of the goal to bring them back — that was the expensive bit. But let’s face it, if that idea gets up it will have the quality of being new!

UPDATE XVIII. Margo Kingston and her student Webdiarists planned to cover RuddCon ‘08, but so far they haven’t posted a single word.

UPDATE XIX. The SMH’s Mike Carlton wasn’t invited:

What a relief it is not to be on the A-list any more.

Carlton was previously on an A-list? What did the A stand for?

UPDATE XX. Rainmaker Tim Flannery didn’t turn up, thus preventing any floods.

UPDATE XXI. The summit’s best idea:

"Make death a better experience"

You really have to go over and see all the various commentary Tim rounded up - it's hysterical. From the facilitator drawing crude pictures of houses on butcher's paper to the lack of chairs, it is some pretty funny stuff.

Departing Principles

When even the Washington Post has to scold the Democrats for their anti-trade policies, you know it has to be bad. They slam the intellectual dishonesty of the Democrats over the Colombian free trade deal pretty hard this morning.

There are two important countries at the north of South America. One, Colombia, has a democratic government that, with strong support from the Clinton and Bush administrations, has bravely sought to defeat brutal militias of the left and right and to safeguard human rights. The other, Venezuela, has a repressive government that has undermined media freedoms, forcibly nationalized industries, rallied opposition to the United States and, recent evidence suggests, supported terrorist groups inside Colombia. That U.S. unions, human rights groups and now Democrats would focus their criticism and advocacy on the former, to the benefit of the latter, shows how far they have departed from their own declared principles.

The Post points out that there has been real progress in Colombia in controlling violence by President Álvaro Uribe. Things are not by any means perfect there, but they are getting better. A free trade deal would go a long way toward recognizing and rewarding that progress.

Barack Obama has stated that he would meet - without preconditions - with thugs like Hugo Chavez while the Democrat-controlled Congress stonewalls an ally. What kind of a message is the world getting from these behaviors? Simple: it's better to be an enemy of the United States than it is to be a friend. That's pretty sad.

Parochially Simplistic

Mark Steyn hammers at Barack Obama's "small town" comments and points out the logical inconsistencies of the leftist elitism that wants the US to be more like Europe. Steyn is on a roll.

Where was I? Oh, yes. In my book "America Alone," I note a global survey on optimism: 61 percent of Americans were optimistic about the future, 29 percent of the French, 15 percent of Germans. Take it from a foreigner: In my experience, Americans are the least "bitter" people in the developed world. Secular, gun-free big-government Europe doesn't seem to have done anything for people's happiness. Consider by way of example the words of Keith Reade. He's not an Obama speechwriter, he's a writer for the London Daily Mirror. And the day after the 2004 presidential election he expressed his frustration in an alarmingly Obamaesque way:

"Were I a Kerry voter, though, I'd feel deep anger, not only at them returning Bush to power, but for allowing the outside world to lump us all into the same category of moronic muppets. The self-righteous, gun-totin', military-lovin', sister-marryin', abortion-hatin', gay-loathin', foreigner-despisin', nonpassport ownin' rednecks, who believe God gave America the biggest d*** in the world so it could urinate on the rest of us and make their land 'free and strong.'"

Well, that's certainly why I supported Bush, but I'm not sure it entirely accounts for the other 62,039,073 incontinent rednecks. Reade, though, does usefully enumerate some of the distinctive features that separate America from the rest of the West. "Self-righteous"? If you want a public culture that reeks of indestructible faith in its own righteousness, try Europe – especially when they're talking about America: If you disagree with Eutopian wisdom, you must be an idiot.

Obama and far too many Democrats have bought into this delusion, most thoroughly distilled in Thomas Frank's book "What's The Matter With Kansas?", whose argument is that heartland voters are too dumb (i.e., "moronic muppets") to vote for their own best interests.

Europeans did "vote for their own best interests" – i.e., cradle-to-grave welfare, 35-hour workweeks, six weeks of paid vacation, etc. – and as a result they now face a perfect storm of unsustainable entitlements, economic stagnation and declining human capital that's left them so demographically beholden to unassimilable levels of immigration that they're being remorselessly Islamized with every passing day. We should thank God (forgive the expression) that America's loser gun nuts don't share the same sophisticated rational calculation of "their best interests" as do Thomas Frank, Obama, too many Democrats and the European political establishment.

Steyn argues that America is not more like Europe - thoroughly miserable - because it "clings" to God and guns. The left's insistence that we need to be more like socialized Europe is clueless elitism.

There is quite a lot more, I'd urge readers to click over and read the whole thing.

Unintentional Juxtaposition

I'm sure that the Washington Post didn't do this intentionally, but they still managed to pull off a rather amusing juxtaposition of stories this morning. The irony should make you chuckle - or cry. First headline: Border Fence May Impede Wildlife.

TUCSON — The debate over the fence the United States is building along its southern border has focused largely on the project's costs, feasibility and how well it will curb illegal immigration. But one of its most lasting impacts may well be on the animals and vegetation that make this politically fraught landscape their home.

Some wildlife researchers have grown so concerned about the consequences of bisecting hundreds of miles of rugged habitat that they have talked of engaging in civil disobedience to block the fence's construction.

"This wall is so asinine, and so wrong, I am one of a dozen scientists ready to lay our bodies down in front of tractors," Healy Hamilton, who directs the Center for Biodiversity Research and Information at the California Academy of Sciences, told colleagues at a recent scientific retreat here. "This is one thing we might be able to stop."

"Make it 13!" said Allison Jones, a conservation biologist at the Wild Utah Project, an advocacy group.

Hamilton and Jones have yet to throw themselves before bulldozers, but their call to arms reflects the researchers' growing fears that the wall will imperil species that, in Hamilton's words, "walk, fly or crawl across that border."

Ah, the concern is touching, of course. The irony, however is in the second article, detailing some wildlife that is coming across the porous southern border. Mexico's Drug Violence Spills Into U.S.

PUERTO PALOMAS, Mexico — Javier Emilio Pérez Ortega, a workaholic Mexican police chief, showed up at the sleepy, two-lane border crossing here last month and asked U.S. authorities for political asylum.

Behind him, law and order was vanishing fast. In the four months he had served as Puerto Palomas police chief, drug traffickers had threatened to kill him and his officers if they tried to block the flow of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States, his former colleagues said on condition of anonymity.

After a particularly menacing telephone call, his 10-man force resigned en masse. His bodyguards quit, too. Abandoned by his men and unable to trust the notoriously corrupt Mexican authorities, Pérez Ortega turned to the only place he believed he could find refuge — the United States, the former colleagues said.

As President Bush meets this week with Mexican President Felipe Calderón in New Orleans, the repercussions of Mexico's battle with drug cartels are increasingly gushing into the United States, giving rise to thorny new problems for Mexican and U.S. officials, as well as the millions of people who live along the border.

There is wildlife and there is wildlife. Mexican drug gangs are killing American Border Patrol agents and bullets are flying across the border in ever-increasing amounts. It would be nice if some of this particular wildlife could be diverted away from the border by a fence.