Masquerade

The Washington Post has this article about Chinese resentment of atrocities committed by the Japanese in World War II.

Look, anyone who knows history knows the Japanese did some really horrible things in the second world war. Atrocities were almost routine. But why the sudden interest? Why the sudden plans to level a school and apartments to build a museum to detail the atrocities?

It's a masquerade. The real problem is that China sees Japan as an economic and strategic rival because Japan is allied to the US. The Chinese resent that Japan doesn't want China to take over Taiwan.

This is a way to get the media to cover this in a way to generate sympathy for the righteousness of the Chinese position. Standard Soviet doctrine, get the press to do the heavy lifting of turning public opinion your way.

I note that this reporter put a lot of the real reasons in the story. Whether on purpose or not. I hope the author did it this way so it's acceptable to the Chinese censors but still lets the real reasons out.

The Spin Is Reaching New Heights (Or Depths)

The Washington Post has this article. The headline: "Warrantless Wiretaps Possible In The US".

What did Gonzales actually say? "I wouldn't rule it out".

OK, what they did not report, in any way shape or form, was the damned question that was asked. Just a vague generality. The wording of the question matters a lot in this context and they are not reporting the question.

Thought experiment:

A man, Tom,  is asked to testify in front of a jury.

Answer: I'd kill every one of them without a thought.

Headline: Tom Wants To Kill Them All!

Question one: What would you do if you met three harmless old ladies?

Question two: What would you do if your kitchen was infested with cockroaches?

In which case is the answer reasonable? Without the question asked, the headline is meaningless spin.

Silly exaggeration? Maybe. But you can NOT make a good judgment without the facts folks. You can't. The exact words of the question have to be reported, not just the answer. There is no context to judge whether the answer was reasonable.

I Need a New BS-o-Meter

The old one pegged, overloaded and burned out when I read this little gem:

"They played hip-hop and rock music, very loud," Muhammad said. "I remember they played Meatloaf and Aerosmith over and over. I hated that. … When I became a Muslim, I had tried to get away from this. I'd canceled all the music out of my head and now they were forcing it back again."

Muhammad said women came to the house, naked or partially clothed, and were shown to him — an affront to devout Muslims.

"This mental torture was a lot worse then the physical torture," he said. "For they were now working on my brain. I think I came to several emotional breakdowns in this time."

An interrogator whom Muhammad nicknamed "Scarface" purportedly informed the Ethiopian he was being brainwashed."Scarface, the interrogator, told me what was going on. 'We're going to change your brain,'" according to the account.

One, if this is the best "brainwashing" they can come up with in Morocco (where he was supposedly spirited away to), They should lose their membership cards to the Torturers union.

Two, have you ever heard such a lame bunch of crap trying to be passed off as torture?

He also said the torturers cut all over his private parts with a scalpel. Now, there should be scars from that, right? Of course, there's no way to tell where or when they were inflicted, is there? But from the rest of the described "torture", I doubt the people abusing him could hold a scalpel without seriously harming themselves.

Whereupon we come back to the cartoonish worldview of the dedicated lefty: The US is both unstoppable evil incarnate with agencies that can run roughshod over the world and at the same time so woefully incompetent that those same agencies cannot tie their own shoes.

Like I said, the Bullshit meter pegged out on this one.

Wow, This Year Is Going To Be Uglier Than I thought

I knew it would be bad, but this is reaching cartoonish levels now.

My Election Analysis has a post on Chris Bowers' call for lefties to attack Lynn Swann's Football Hall of Fame credentials. In order to win an election, he's publicly calling for a smear job.

That's absolutely pathetic.

Yet Another Misleading Headline

Has the lefties frothing. "Libby Says Bush Authorized Leaks"

Read beyond the headline, though:

Lewis "Scooter" Libby testified to a federal grand jury that he had received "approval from the President through the Vice President" to divulge portions of a National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein's purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to the court papers. Libby was said to have testified that such presidential authorization to disclose classified information was "unique in his recollection," the court papers further said.

So, Bush declassifies something and authorizes it to be told to a reporter. So what. It happens all the time in Washington.

The headline should have read "Business As Usual".

UPDATE: Gateway Pundit  has a lot of detail why this is not what the media wants you to think it is.

UPDATE: Austin Bay has a really nice writeup on this.

UPDATE: Even with the spin in this article, the WaPo has to acknowledge that the President has unquestioned authority to declassify material. About time.

The Republicans Just May Have Shot Themselves In The Foot

The Senate have come up with a compromise on immigration.

Some compromise. As NRO puts it; "If this is a compromise, what would an abject surrender look like?"

You may have just lost most of your strength in one really stupid move, Republicans.

Frist just lost any chance at all to win the nomination for president. I like, Hugh Hewitt can't believe this is a good plan. Sorry guys, you just lost me on this one.

Just Another Reason To Distrust The BBC

Well, it's not really their fault. Scammers are sending emails containing part of a BBC news story with a link to click to read the whole thing. The problem is, if you click the link, you do get to read the rest of the article. But while you are doing so, a keylogger program is loaded onto your computer. From then on, your keystrokes are recorded and sent back to the criminal. They steal your user names, passwords and credit card data.

It will only be a matter of time until other media stories are used. Might want to stay away from emails containing partial news stories, folks…..

Well, He Certainly Was Industrious

An Australian man has pleaded guilty to stealing $2 coins from the Royal Australian Mint. He smuggled the stolen coins out right under the eyes of security personnel by hiding them in his boots and lunch box. Although the man's attorney disputes the exact amount, prosecutors say he took $155,000 dollars worth of coins over a span of some ten months from April, 2005 through February, 2006.

Let's see. Assume he worked five days a week, that's around 200 working days, if he didn't take any days off. Holy smoke! He was taking something close to $775 per day. Almost 400 coins at a time.

How the heck did he walk?

We Try So Very Hard To Help

Here at Blue Crab Boulevard. It appears that word of our good advice is spreading! Faithful readers may remember our advice not to use live ammunition to swat flies. That advice came after a report of a man doing just that – resulting in the loss of a hand. He had been using a 40mm cannon shell he found as a paperweight.

Well, it seems that someone in Canada must have been reading our advice. It seems they had a 40mm cannon shell just kicking around the house. Undoubtedly having read our posts (we are insufferably modest about this, aren't we?) they decided they probably shouldn't keep it.

So they donated it to a thrift store. It was live.

The Canadian military bomb disposal people had to fetch the shell and detonate it safely.

Now if we just get one more 40mm shell in the news, we'll have another trifecta!

McKinney Apologizes

"There should not have been any physical contact in this incident," McKinney said in brief remarks on the House floor. "I am sorry that this misunderstanding happened at all and I regret its escalation and I apologize." 

-Representative Cynthia Mckinney

Well, I rather suspect the deafening lack of support has finally made Cynthia McKinney realize she had badly, badly, badly handled the entire incident. Her playing of the race card was so inept that even the media reports were not sympathetic. The reports that a grand jury is now looking into the matter must have played a part as well.

I will say this; it took her much too long to admit she was wrong and she tried to make the issue into something it was not, but at least she finally stood up and admitted it on the floor of the House.

The Democratic party leadership still has some explaining to do: Why were they silent? This was a no-brainer folks. You should have condemned the bad behavior for what it was, not stood mute.

UPDATE: Video here

Photos From The Troops

The Stars and Stripes has a section devoted to publishing photographs taken by soldiers. It always has some very nice pictures from some very talented people. Here's an example:

Submitted by Sgt. Scott A. Gurley, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 116th Field Artillery, Florida Army National Guard, deployed to Camp Phoenix, Kabul, Afghanistan. Soldiers from the 53rd Infantry Brigade tend to an Afghan boy during a medical mission just outside Kabul. (Photo from Stars and Stripes)

News Briefs From Iraq

US and Iraqi security forces rescued three Iraqis chained to a basement wall in Mosul. No details on who had held the men or their identities are available yet.

The rescue team included U.S. soldiers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade and the Iraqi 3rd Battalion, 4th Brigade, 2nd Iraqi Army Division, and members of the Iraqi police.

There were no casualties during the rescue, which followed tips from local Iraqis, officials said.

****************************

An Iraqi court has convicted 22 detainees on charges ranging from illegal border crossing to coordinating attacks on US and Iraqi forces. One death sentence was handed down.

To date Iraqi courts have tried 955 detainees on a variety of charges. 908 of those trials ended in convictions.

Bet you never read any of that in the MSM.

Via Stars and Stripes

Hey! You Forgot The Horse!

There's a lot of history in this country about horse thieves and how they were dealt with in the old west. Often the criminals were hung, sometimes with only sketchy legal proceedings. I knew a guy once who was quite proud that one of his ancestors had ended up at the end of a posse's rope. For stealing horses, of course.

Europeans can't quite seem to get the concept down properly. Thieves in Amsterdam are leaving the horse behind and absconding with the saddles. It seems there is a growing demand in Eastern Europe for the saddles – they are making them into barstools. Which I'm sure ties into the theme of this post. Barstools made from saddles must be going into a Western themed bar. Unless the saddles are actually ending up in the famous red light district of Amsterdam. Which would be an entirely different discussion.

Baby Shower Bash!

These folks really know how to party!

Three people were arrested after a baby shower turned into a brawl. One person was shot and the pregnant guest of honor was beaten with a stick.

Authorities said the shooting victim, Aristotle Garcia, got into a fight with a man who is dating his ex-girlfriend. The argument, over whether the woman let their 5-year-old daughter drink beer, escalated and drew in two other people — Jazz Rivas and Juan Velazquez, said Police Lt. Cheryl C. Claprood.

When the baby shower's hostess tried to intervene, Rivas began hitting some of the guests, including the 22-year-old mother-to-be, with a large stick, she said.

Velazquez fired a gun in the air, then fired it into the crowd, hitting Garcia in the stomach, according to police. Garcia, 26, was in stable condition at Baystate Medical Center. The mother-to-be, who was seven months pregnant, was treated after the incident Saturday and released.

And you thought baby showers were boring.

Free Speech Under Attack

In Australia? Volokh has the details on an Australian academic under attack by the "Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission" bureaucrats who are deciding what constitutes proper speech.

Bloody hell.