Stolen Paintings Recovered

Norwegian authorities have recovered two stolen paintings by Edvard Munch that have been missing for two years. Three men are already serving jail terms for the thefts, but it took until now to actually recover the paintings.

 "We are 100 percent certain they are the originals," police chief Iver Stensrud told a news conference. "The damage was much less than feared."

"The Scream" depicts a terrified figure under a blood-red sky. The other, "Madonna," shows a bare-breasted woman with long black hair.

Two armed men broke into the Munch Museum in Oslo in August 2004 and yanked the two works from the walls in front of dozens of terrified tourists.

The paintings, both from 1893, have been missing even though three men were convicted in May of taking part in the theft and were sentenced to up to eight years in jail. Two of them were ordered to pay $122 million in damages.

I never really cared for The Scream but I must admit, Madonna is actually a nice painting (may not be considered work safe even though it is art). The title may or may not bother people, although there is an alternate title to the painting that does not have the religious overtones.

Raising A Zombie

When necromancy is performed, the Baron Samedi is invoked in a cemetery. Three people must be present. They dress the cross on the grave with Baron Samedi's traditional clothes, and burn incense and herbs. Then they request his help. They know the Baron has arrived when the clothes on the cross flap as if disturbed by wind. Some actually claim to see him - a tall black man with white beard and eyeless sockets in his head, though he can see very well.

The participants ask the corpse various questions. If it answers them, the corpse is rewarded by a limited time as a zombie. The zombie acts as the servant of the people who raised him, and performs tasks for them.

(Encyclopedia Mythica)

Jeff Greenfield does his very best to keep the Plame flap alive despite the stake driven through the heart of the allegations by the revelation the Richard Armitage made was the original source - and he did it inadvertently.

This week numerous news organizations, including CNN, have identified former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as the original source for Robert Novak's column that identified Valerie Plame as a CIA operative.

According to CNN's sources, Armitage revealed Plame's identity inadvertently to Novak, who then confirmed Plame's identity with White House adviser Karl Rove.

It's a twist that has many on the Right saying, "we told you so" and some on the Left saying "not so fast."

The controversy began in July 2003, when former career diplomat Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times, debunking a key assertion by President Bush about Saddam's intentions.

In his 2003 State of the Union address, Bush had said: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

In his op-ed, Wilson wrote that he had been dispatched to Niger in 2002 by the CIA, and found no evidence of such an effort.

A week later, a column by Novak revealed that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA employee. The point of the disclosure, apparently, was to suggest that Wilson's tip had been a nepotistic favor.

Notice that Greenfield repeats Wilson's canard despite the fact that investigations both here and in Britain have proven - conclusively - that Wilson did not tell the truth in his op-ed. So we're right back with false allegations about non-events. Notice the desperate attempt to spin this all back up. Like a mad gerbil on an exercise wheel, the rpms increase along with the squeaking noises.

Paging Baron Samedi.

UPDATE: Clarice Feldman has a bit more on just how wrong Wilson may have been. (Link relayed via Larwyn).

Bad News From China

A Chinese court has made a definitive ruling on the right to have sex. Simply put, they say there is no such thing.

Wei Suying, 31, whose husband has suffered from erectile dysfunction since a 2003 workplace accident, filed suit in a Shanghai court asking for 220,000 yuan ($27,650) in compensation from the shopping center where the accident occurred, it said.

The compensation included claims for mental anguish and for her purchases of products such as vibrators.

"I was not even 30 years old when my husband had the accident, which deprived me of my right to enjoy sexual life," the newspaper quoted Wei as saying.

But the court ruled that Chinese law does not define an individual's sex life as a protected right. Relatives can only ask for mental anguish compensation when a victim dies, the report said.

Wei's husband, Zhang Chengxiang, stumbled and hit his genitals on the corner of some audio equipment when an iron bar fell from a vent and knocked his head while he was working in a shopping center, it said.

Ok, aside from that sounding like an extremely painful accident (and a really awkwardly constructed sentence describing it), what implications does this ruling have for the West? Well, if the leftist lawyers force Western law into compliance, I see a spot of trouble coming. Just think of all the past Western court decisions that will get overturned. The mind boggles.

Hedgehogs Beat McDonald’s Into Submission

A wave of depressed hedgehogs that have been committing suicide recently in England has been misinterpreted by animal lovers. Rather than get the suicidal insectivores the counseling they need, the activists have forced McDonald's to redesign the packaging for the popular McFlurry.

LONDON (Reuters) - Hedgehogs have finally humbled burger giant McDonald's after years of campaigning, forcing the company to redesign its killer McFlurry ice-cream containers.

Up to now the opening in the container has been large enough for hedgehogs to get their heads into for a lick of the left-over dessert — a trap they have then been unable to withdraw from, so dying of starvation in untold numbers.

But from September 1, the wide-mouthed opening in the lid of the McFlurry containers will be reduced in size, making them too small for the sugar-loving animals to get their heads into.

"This is excellent, it is long overdue news," said Fay Vass, chief executive of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society. "We have been in touch with McDonald's about this problem for over five years and are delighted that they have at last solved the problem."

McDonald's said in a statement the design change had resulted from pressure from the society which prompted "significant research and design testing" to develop new packaging.

"The smaller aperture of the lid has been designed to prevent hedgehogs from entering the McFlurry container in the unfortunate incidence that a lid is littered and is then accessible to wildlife," it added.

Typical. Blame the corporation for the hedgehog's depression. The real reason that hedgehogs are so down is because the activists have taken away the one career choice the hedgehogs had open to them. The "animal rights" people banned using hedgehogs as croquet balls, driving the poor creatures to welfare and despair. 

That is, of course, aside from the fact that the activists should be going after the slobs who drop garbage all over the countryside.

The Trials And Tribulations Of Bloggers

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting look at one facet of blogging that causes a bit of a headache. What does a blogger do when he or she wants to go on vacation? Get guest posters? Go dark? Lose readers?

Yet for the sliver of people whose livelihood depends on the blog — whether they are conservative, liberal or don't care — stepping away from the keyboard can be difficult. Unlike other jobs, where co-workers can fill in for an absent employee, blogs are usually a one-person show. A blogger's personality carries the site. When the host isn't there, readers tend to stray. August is a slow time for all blogs, but having an absent host makes the problem worse. Lose enough readers, and advertisers are sure to join the exodus.

It's something that John Amato, host of the political blog Crooks and Liars, knows all too well. Mr. Amato rarely steps away from his site for any significant amount of time, although he finds updating the page multiple times a day exhausting.

"You become your blog," says Mr. Amato, whose site gets an average of 150,000 hits a day. "It's John Amato. They're used to John Amato."

Some bloggers thrive on the manic pace. Getaways for Jim Romenesko, host of the popular media blog bearing his name, consist of a Friday afternoon drive every month or so from his home in the Chicago suburbs to visit friends in Milwaukee. The 85-mile trip should last around 90 minutes. For Mr. Romenesko, it takes nearly four hours — because he stops at eight different Starbucks on the way to update his site.

The longest Mr. Romenesko has refrained from posting on his site, which gets about 70,000 hits a day, was for one week three years ago on the insistence of site owner, the Poynter Institute. He hasn't taken a vacation in seven years. "The column's called Romenesko," he says. "I just feel it should be Romenesko" who writes it.

While it may seem like a chore to outsiders, many bloggers enjoy the compulsion. Mark Lisanti, who runs the entertainment gossip blog Defamer, is much like Mr. Romenesko in his no-vacation tendencies. Although he gets three weeks off each year from Gawker Media, which owns the site, he rarely takes a day. Not because he can't, he just doesn't want to. "My plan is to die face down on the desk in the middle of a post," Mr. Lisanti jokes.

Jeff Jarvis, author of the political blog BuzzMachine, knows the feeling. He has always posted during his annual vacation to Skytop Lodge in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. When the resort had only an expensive Internet connection, he paid the hefty fee to keep his blog current. His son, Jake, now 14 years old, paid for half of the connection costs so he could keep up his technology blog, Wire Catcher.

I took a vacation very shortly after I started writing Blue Crab Boulevard. Even with the minuscule readership I had at that point, taking that time off hurt my daily hit count and took some time to recover from. So it really is a dilemma, especially if you are writing a one-person blog. Elizabeth Holmes of the WSJ does a nice job on this piece.

The Rigid Enforcement Of Stereotypes

Jeff Jacoby has a column in the Boston Globe that reveals the rigid enforcement of "diversity" guidelines in the field of education publication and the toll it takes on the truth.

YOU'RE A publisher of children's textbooks, and you have a problem. Your diversity guidelines — quotas in all but name — require you to include pictures of disabled children in your elementary and high school texts, but it isn't easy to find handicapped children who are willing and able to pose for a photographer. Kids confined to wheelchairs often suffer from afflictions that affect their appearance, such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy. How can you meet your quota of disability images if you don't have disabled models who are suitably photogenic?

Well, you can always do what Houghton Mifflin does. The well-known textbook publisher keeps a wheelchair on hand as a prop and hires able-bodied children from a modeling agency to pose in it. It keeps colorful pairs of crutches on hand, too — in case a child model turns out to be the wrong size for the wheelchair.

This is bad enough, but it actually gets far worse.

Some images are banned from textbooks because they are deemed stereotypical or offensive. For example, McGraw-Hill's guidelines specify that Asians not be portrayed wearing glasses or as intellectuals and that publishers avoid showing Mexican men in ponchos or sombreros. “One major publisher vetoed a photo of a barefoot child in an African village," Golden writes, “on the grounds that the lack of footwear reinforced the stereotype of poverty on that continent." Grinding poverty is in fact a daily reality for hundreds of millions of Africans. But when reality conflicts with political correctness, reality gets the boot.

So, on occasion, does historical perspective, as for example when a McGraw-Hill US history text devoted a profile and photograph to Bessie Coleman, the first African-American woman pilot — but neglected even to mention Wilbur and Orville Wright. “A company spokesman," the Journal reports dryly, “said the brothers had been left out inadvertently."

It isn't only when it comes to texts that diversity has led to dishonesty, or even to the manipulation of photos. In 2000, the University of Wisconsin at Madison featured a group of students cheering at a football game on the cover of its admissions brochure. One of those students was Diallo Shabazz, a black senior who hadn't been at the game. University officials, desperately wanting the new publication to reflect a diverse student body, had lifted Diallo's image from somewhere else and digitally inserted it into the football shot. “Our intentions were good," Madison's director of university publications said when the deception was exposed, “but our methods were bad."

You know what they say about good intentions. As Jacoby points out the rigid enforcement of these diversity rules means that the truth comes in in last place. Often it is the lie that gets a prominent role while the reality is swept under the carpet. So it is that "Hispanics" must be of dark complexion with dark hair. African children must be poor, but not barefoot. The mind boggles at the lengths these purveyors of educational materials go to to provide what is, quite frankly, nothing but agenda driven indoctrination.

The diversity movement is actually an insidious idea that reduces groups of people to certain physical characteristics and demands that the text materials conform to those stereotypes. As in too many popular ideas these days, it is actually a form of elitism. You see, the diversity forces imply, we recognize you by the color of your skin or by the wheelchair you are confined to or by the clothing you wear. And we will alter the truth because our intentions are so very pure.

But only if you fit into our preconceived notions of what you must look like.

Glenn Ford, 1916-2006

Longtime Hollywood leading man Glenn Ford has died. Police were called to his home at about 4pm yesterday and found him dead. No foul play is suspected. One of the last of the greats is gone. Rest in peace. The Washington Post has a very nice obituary.

Questions, Questions

This is actually amusing. Reuters is reporting on questions raised by the New York Times deciding to block Britons from reading a story about the evidence gathered so far in the foiled bomb plot. I posted about that brilliant bit of hypocritical ineptitude here and here. Reuters also note the fact that the Time Of London did publish details that were substantially the same. So the New York Times was completely insane to do this, right? Not exactly, according to the so-called reasoning of a UK legal consultant.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York Times decision to block British online readers from seeing a story about London terrorism suspects raises new questions on restricting the flow of information in the Internet age, legal and media experts say.

The New York Times said on Tuesday it had blocked British Internet readers from seeing a story detailing elements of the investigation into a suspected plot to blow up airliners between Britain and the United States.

The story was published in Monday's paper. Under British laws, courts will punish media organizations that publish material that judges feel may influence jurors and prevent suspects receiving a fair trial.

"There has not been a prosecution for contempt over anybody publishing outside this jurisdiction (Britain), but logically there is no reason why there should not be," said Caroline Kean, partner at UK media law firm Wiggin.

And here we have the insane trap of the whole issue. If British courts can reach into the US and prosecute Americans for violating laws that do not comply with the American constitution we have an enormous problem. If this is where the left wants to go this country - and the world are in serious, serious trouble. Can they not see the shambles the entire world will be in once you start doing this? Turnabout, after all is fair play. Our Supreme Court should reach out and strike down these British laws right now. Then China will slap all of us with Google restrictions to comply with their laws.

That is not the worst aspect, either. Think of some of the other legal systems.

You damn fools. You'll lawyer your way into a collapse of civilization.

What Vitriolic Rhetoric Brings

I read a report like this one, and I despair for what is going on here in the US. A uniformed member of the National Guard from Washington State was brutally attacked by five men. They called the serviceman a "Baby killer".

The soldier was walking to a convenience store when a sport utility vehicle pulled up alongside him and the driver asked if he was in the military and if he had been in any action.

The driver then got out of the vehicle, displayed a gun and shouted insults at the victim. Four other suspects exited the vehicle and knocked the soldier down, punching and kicking him.

“And during the assault the suspects called him a baby killer. At that point they got into the car and drove off and left him on the side of the road,” Detective Ed Troyer with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News.

The suspects were driving a black Chevy Suburban-type SUV.

“This is something new for us, we have not had military people assaulted because they were in the military or somebody's opposition to a war or whatever,” Troyer said.

The driver is described as a white male, 25-30 years old, 5 feet 10 inches tall, heavy build, short blond hair, wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, and armed with a handgun.

The vehicle's passengers are described as white males, 20-25 years old. Some of the suspects wore red baseball hats and red sweatshirts during the attack.

This is what the vitriolic rhetoric coming from the left breeds. This is the disgrace that these words foment. This is what happens when irresponsible language becomes routine.

I will say this and leave it. Do not - do not ever - try this where I am in visual range.

Dysfunction For Fun And Profit

Dysfunction Junction, what's your function?
Hooking up voters and wannabes
Dysfunction Junction, how's that function?
I got two favorite sons
that I want to appease
(With sincere apologies to Schoolhouse Rock)

David Broder positively rips into the Democrats for screwing with the primary schedule for 2008. Is some of it a resistance to change? Probably. Is some of it common sense? You bet. He lays out some pretty solid reasons why the Democrats are running with scissors here.

The revised calendar, at least tentatively, has the Iowa caucuses on Monday, Jan. 14, 2008, with Nevada holding its caucuses five days later, on Saturday, Jan. 19. Then it would be back across the country for the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, Jan. 22, with South Carolina voting in a primary one week later, on Tuesday, Jan. 29.

All this effort to force-feed four contests in four different parts of the country into a two-week period at the start of the year is designed, the sponsors say, to make the presidential nominating process more "representative."

What they mean is that Iowa and New Hampshire, which have led the nominating process since 1976, are overwhelmingly white — and notably short of the African American and Latino voters on whom Democrats depend in the general election.

So Nevada, with a growing Hispanic population, was inserted before New Hampshire, thanks also to a boost from Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada's senior senator. And South Carolina was an easy choice to fill the need for a state with lots of black voters, pleasing native son and former North Carolina senator John Edwards, an unannounced contender for the nomination that eluded him last time.

This Democratic version of affirmative action leaves a lot to be desired. Unions are a major source of Democratic votes and money. Maybe Rhode Island should be rewarded for being a stronghold of union activity at a time when labor elsewhere is beleaguered. And gays vote Democratic; shouldn't the states that are home to San Francisco and Key West be allowed to vote early? And if Jewish contributors keep the party solvent, shouldn't New York be up there with the other pacesetters?

Always a problem. Who to pander to when it comes time to dole out the limited pandering budget? Broder is very harsh here. I suspect he's right to hold the position he does, too. Both New Hampshire and Iowa take their roles very seriously indeed. But now, instead of trying to define themselves to a few groups, candidates will have to try to hit twice as many events. It is going to be a mad rush with few people able to stand out. In the long run, this may be the greatest damage the Democrats have done to themselves for the next election cycle.

On A “Dismal” Economy

I have noted a number of times (the posts are around here somewhere) that the economy isn't what the MSM tries to sell. My rule of thumb: Go out to eat on Friday or Saturday evening. See if there is a wait, see if there is a full parking lot. If there is, there is no problem with the economy. The first thing people cut when times are tough? Eating out. But, hey, don't take my word for it. Someone has run the numbers and charted the results. Back Talk has it broken down in chart form and it is quite telling. (You'll have to go over there to view the charts, Back Talk deserves the traffic for working that hard.)

So why do Americans, or more specifically, the American media hate this economy that is the envy of the world?

The key word there is 'envy'.

The Life Is REALLY Not Fair Department

Many people do not seem to grasp the one, basic, all-encompassing fact of life. That fact is very simple: Life is not fair. No matter how you try to make it so, it will just never happen. Some people find gobs of cash laying about - or win the lottery. Life isn't fair. Some people miss all the red lights. Life isn't fair. Some people become movie stars with no appreciable talent whatsoever. Life isn't fair.

Some high school students score a prom date with Miss Universe Australia.

At his formal end of year dance sixteen-year old Avramides will be walking in with the undisputed belle of the ball on his arm — Miss Universe Australia 2006, Erin McNaught.

The ambitious young Trinity Grammar student initially invited Australia's 2004 Miss Universe winner Jennifer Hawkins, but she said she couldn't make it because she had filming commitments.

Hearing of his plight, Australia's Daily Telegraph helped get him the date, Avramides said.

The paper reported Wednesday he was "totally stoked" that the beauty had agreed to partner him.

"She's cute," he said of 24-year-old McNaught, nicknamed McNaughty for appearing in a topless photo shoot.

"Dad's pretty happy too," Avramides said, adding that his father insisted on driving them to the ball. (Ed note: $5 says Dad tries to ditch the kid!)

Life REALLY, REALLY isn't fair. Not one bit. Gee, I hope my wife doesn't read this.

That would really be unfair.

Innocents

The headlines and the stories are always full of the details of the crime, the background of the criminal and the typical, "He was such a nice guy" quotes about the criminal. Sometimes it is more important to remember the ones the criminal hurt or killed. So, whether or not the driver of the SUV who went on a hit and run rampage was or was not crazy, was or was not motivated out of hate, was or was not anything at all, the ones we really need to think about are his victims.

One of the victims was Vera Jenkins, 40. She had just left her home in San Francisco's Western Addition to meet her husband for lunch and was in the crosswalk at Bush and Pierce streets when a black sport utility vehicle plowed into her from behind.

"She said he seemed to slow down and then gunned his motor at my wife," said Jenkins' husband, Walter DeFrantz, who rushed to the scene after his sobbing wife called him on her cell phone.

The impact shoved Jenkins into a pole before she fell to the ground. She had a hard time getting up, her husband said. Witnesses rushed to her aide and called for an ambulance. She was taken to Kaiser Permanente and was listed in fair condition.

DeFrantz said no bones were broken, "but she's sore as hell."

Pedro Aglugov, 70, was hit while walking in a crosswalk. Afterward, he sat at a sidewalk cafe at California and Fillmore streets with his head bandaged with gauze, holding an ice pack to one elbow.

"Somebody hit me and didn't stop. He was going real fast. I was lucky I wasn't hurt more," he said. Aglugov was taken to the hospital later, becoming the fourth person hospitalized from that intersection.

There are so very many more. The rampaging driver's family and lawyer are doing their level best to spin this as a case on mental illness. But sources close to the investigation say the man shows no remorse and no signs of being insane. He just wanted to run people down.

 Omeed Aziz Popal, now in custody for a fatal hit-and-run rampage that apparently began in Fremont and ended in San Francisco, has a history of mental problems and suffered an apparent mental breakdown Tuesday on the way to a job interview, family members and his attorney said Tuesday.

But those involved in the investigation — speaking on condition of anonymity — discount any mental illness, saying the 29-year-old Afghanistan native seemed coherent, unrepentant and claimed that he repeatedly drove at pedestrians because he "just wanted to.''

According to his attorney, Majeed Samara, Popal suffered a breakdown about five months ago and had to be hospitalized.

"He woke up and started freaking out,'' he said. The family took Popal to Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Fremont for treatment, but he was released. "It looks like he felt better, but after that, he started getting worse.''

About two months ago, Popal falsely confessed to killing someone in San Francisco, Samara said. He said Popal was interviewed by investigators in Fremont and his statement turned out to be a "John Karr confession,'' referring to the man recently released in the killing of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey.

Just remember the innocents. Don't let it all be about Popal.

If You’re Wondering Why

Tom Cruise was dropped by Paramount like a hot rock, you just have to take a look at his latest stunt to get yourself a clue. He's going to auction a little trinket off for charity. But not just any trinket. No it's a little memento from his new daughter. One that parents are are quite familiar with.

Only normal parents leave them in the diapers instead of having them bronzed.

NEW YORK (AFP) - Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have yet to show their baby daughter off in public, but eager fans were given an unusual preview with the chance to see a bronze cast depicting her first solid stool.

The scatological sculpture — more doodoo than Dada — is purportedly cast from 19-week old Suri's first bowel movement and will be shown at the Capla Kesting gallery in Brooklyn, New York, before being auctioned off for charity.

The artist behind the work, Daniel Edwards, previously courted controversy with a life-size nude sculpture of pop star Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug. That work was shown at the same gallery in April.

That is just plain creepy.

Hugo Chavez Has A New Pal

Hugo Chavez has a brand new playmate. Syrian president Bashar Assad. Chavez says he and Assad are united against America.

"We want to cooperate to build a new world where states' and people's self-determination are respected," Chavez said after a 2 1/2-hour meeting with Assad at the presidential palace.

Speaking at Damascus airport on his arrival late Tuesday, Chavez said both countries agreed to stand up to the United States.

"We have the same political vision and we will resist together the American imperialist aggression," he said.

Pictures of Chavez and Assad lined the streets of downtown Damascus, and thousands of Syrians waved banners and Venezuelan flags along the route Chavez took to his meeting with Assad. The two leaders strolled down a red carpet leading into the People's Palace as a 21-gun salute was fired.

With both presidents looking on, delegates from the two countries signed a total of 13 political and economic agreements, and Assad said Damascus supports Caracas' candidacy to be a non-permanent member of the Security Council in 2007-8.

The Syrian leader thanked Chavez for his support for Middle Eastern nations, telling reporters that the leftist president had made "great stands" in support of Arab causes.

What is building here is a totalitarian alliance. The comparisons to 1938 are more than apt.