SAVE THE ASIAN CARP!

I am, right now, proposing an Asian Carp Empathy Museum in Chicago. Given this time of UNPRECEDENTED CRISIS, this STIMULUS project is entirely necessary to educate the public and policy makers so that they will not take rash action that will harm the fishes' collective psyche. We should show the Asian Carp that we recognize their intelligence and that we are willing to reason with them, perhaps offering some kind of COMPROMISE to their leader. Also, we will CREATE JOBS for several hundred brothers- and sisters-in-law to not show up to work on their three-day week and still be paid their salaries of $200,000/yr. Anyway, I'll get on with it (I've gotta crack at Obama's town, sorry).

So we all know about the Asian Carp (big, flying fish that eat a lot of plankton and weigh up to 100 pounds/ grow to 4 ft long) that are in the Mississippi River and headed for our beloved Lake Michigan. Illinois has been making an effort (we think) to prevent the spread and "kill" (a bad, violent, sexist, racist, evil word...of course) off the fish. The Feds gave the state $13million to help pay for the process, however, Michigan's Attorney General Mike Cox says that's not enough.

I did think it was high time for yet another high-profile lawsuit to come out of the good AG. He is, after all, running for governor. His lawsuit basically states that the Supreme Court must order the closing of Chicagoan locks (like the Soo Locks, eh?) until the threat has subsided. This is a decent enough idea...but it shows Cox's inability to act outside the system.

Now, Cox says that "ONLY the Supreme Court can save us now!" (I may be paraphrasing a bit...) and it shows his lack of grasp with big ideas. You want to stop the threat? 9 elderly people in Washington DC are not the only way to stop fish. How does one stop fish? Fishermen, duh.

Call me naive, but lets get Ted Nugent, a handful of my uncles, and several thousand other Midwestern fishermen to skip their annual, unproductive ice fishing trips and get on down to the city. I think that the obvious the 'out of the box' solution here is to have a Million Man Carp Shoot! Have the government buy the fish by the pound, use the TARP/Stimulus money, and combine the bad economy with the carp problem and come up with a solution. Other ideas include: bombing the schools (to clarify for our MEA union friends: I mean schools of fish), killing them with a virus, an oil slick on top of the water, killing all the plankton in the area, releasing whatever eats the carp into the water, hiring pet food companies to catch them sans bureaucracy, etc.etc.etc. The problem is that no one thinks.

Cox can zero in on the Supreme Court and be a political opportunist all he wants, but this is the result of the entire region's state governments operating just like Mike Cox: within our broken system of established protocols and bureaucratic guidelines...

Asian Carp and other invasive species are 21st century problems that they're trying to solve with 20th century methods. Cox has shown, here, that he's a resourceful 1970's lawyer...a fact that disqualifies him, in my books, for Michigan's governor in the 21st century.

...and think about that Carp Shoot idea...

Check the video's comments! THOUSANDS of more original ideas than Cox's!)

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