Month: April 2007

Apparently, some guy in Arkansas wrote a letter that got printed in the local paper:

You may have noticed that March of this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century….

This should come as no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would ave considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?

Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps the next time there should be serious tudies before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.

CONNIE M. MESKIMEN
Hot Springs

Ace of Ace of Spades HQ says:

How could someone be this dumb, and how could a letters-page editor then be dumb enough on top of that to publish it? The hoax warning bells are sounding.

Are the letters page editors dumb? I don’t think so. However, if you read many of them, you’ll notice that they often contain poorly-reasoned flights of fancy that doesn’t elevate the discourse about the subject. As a matter of fact, some papers were apparently not satisfied with the depths of idiocy letter writers could produce and actually started publishing phoned-in comments to up the inanity.

I have to wonder why smaller local newspapers include these little tirades in their pages. After all, printing the paper is expensive and they are supposed to keep the gates to ensure quality or something. Instead, we’re treated to idiocy (and the occasional satire masked as idiocy, as this letter was).

Something in me whispers that papers publish this sort of thing because it reflects what the acolytes of the Fourth Estate Church believe of the unwashed masses who read instead of writing the paper. Because they can crack up about the simpletons who believe what they print when standing over the coffeepot in the kitchenette of the paper. Because journalists are different from and better than the common man whose voice they’ve made heard.

Great moments in charge-layering, where prosecutors can add extra crimes for the same action:

• A criminal in New York is charged with hate crimes because some of his victims were over 60 years old. That’s right, boys and girls, if you’re going to commit crimes, make sure you select a diverse set of victims, because if they’re of the same protected class, you must hate them.
• Some former American Idol contestant is arrested, and she’s hit with an extra charge of introduction of contraband into a correctional facility. Because she was carrying some coke and the authorities uncovered it while searching her before they actually put her in jail.

Double jeopardy is against the law; however, making the same action or procedures for processing people who committed a crime into other crimes, our system gets to subvert the intent of the Constitution. For law and order and higher personal conviction rates or easier plea bargains.

A closed society that enslaves women deserves an AP investigation. If it can smear the American military.

Japan’s abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender — with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities — Japan set up a similar “comfort women” system for American GIs.

An Associated Press review of historical documents and records — some never before translated into English — shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan’s atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war.

Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down.

The documents show the brothels were rushed into operation as American forces poured into Japan beginning in August 1945.

“Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops,” recounts the official history of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department, whose jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo. “The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls.”

The orders from the Ministry of the Interior came on August 18, 1945, one day before a Japanese delegation flew to the Philippines to negotiate the terms of their country’s surrender and occupation.

To make a short story long, the Japanese government set up these stations in August 1945 and the American military shut them down in Spring of 1946. They ran for under a year, a chaotic period wherein the occupation began. Some of the women were probably indentured or enslaved. But thanks to the AP for capturing it as:

AMERICAN MILITARY ENSLAVES FOREIGN WOMEN IN OCCUPIED COUNTRIES FOR SEX!

Twits.

George Tenet doesn’t go quietly into deserved obscurity:

A former U.S. spy chief accused President Bush’s administration of ruining his reputation by misusing a “slam dunk” comment he made during a White House meeting ahead of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Former CIA Director George Tenet told CBS Television’s “60 Minutes” that the administration leaked his comment as opposition to the war grew when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.

“You don’t do this. You don’t throw somebody overboard just because it’s a deflection. Is that honorable? It’s not honorable to me,” Tenet said in an interview to be broadcast Sunday.

Tenet said his comment did not refer to whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, but related to what information could be used to make a public case for the war.

The “slam-dunk” comment first surfaced in journalist Bob Woodward’s 2004 book, “Plan of Attack,” which portrayed Tenet as assuring Bush that finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would be a virtual certainty.

“We can put a better case together for a public case. That’s what I meant,” Tenet told “60 Minutes.” [Emphasis added.]

So his comment wasn’t about facts, it was about spin. Come on, Tenet, you’re not exactly burnishing your what-you-would-call-honorable legacy by implying that your agency was all about building a case instead of uncovering the facts.

Kudos to the AP reporter Madlen Read who spun this story according to her own pecadillos: Dow crosses 13,000 for first time ever:

The Dow Jones industrial average shot past 13,000 for the first time Wednesday as stronger-than-expected earnings reports streamed in, suggesting to investors that corporate America is successfully weathering the cooling economy. [Emphasis added.]

The earnings rising, new homes sales and manufactured goods sales rising, job-creating, cooling economy.

In a move certain to bolster respect for law and order amongst the civilian population, we discover that police are apparently allowed to personally own fully automatic weapons:

Federal prosecutors dropped the criminal case against the last of three Illinois State Police officers accused of federal machine-gun law violations — and signaled Tuesday that charges against a fourth man may soon be addressed.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Crowe dismissed a charge of illegal possession of a machine gun against Special Agent John Yard of Collinsville.

Because, you know, they’re just better than civilians.

Someone let me know if I’m misreading this.

Officials: Pet Food Poison May Have Been Intentional:

For the first time, investigators are saying the chemical that has sickened and killed pets in the United States may have been intentionally added to pet food ingredients by Chinese producers.

Food and Drug Administration investigators say the Chinese companies may have spiked products with the chemical melamine so that they would appear, in tests, to have more value as protein products.

As you know, gentle reader, your Shidoshi of Paranoia speculated it might have been intentional, but for more nefarious reasons.

(Link seen on Rocket Jones.)

UPDATE: So I’m not the only one: The pet food investigation turns to human food.

Art foundation defends properties:
Is this Fox Point mansion a multimillion-dollar house or a museum? Some neighbors want it on the tax rolls.

When is a museum a museum and not just a tax dodge? That’s the question raised by residents who want two Fox Point mansions worth at least $3 million restored to the tax rolls.

The neighbors are calling on the Village Board to re-examine a nearly 20-year-old agreement with the Chipstone Foundation that declared its property overlooking Lake Michigan a museum, granting it tax-exempt status.

Not many have set foot inside the Georgian-style mansion.

If that property belonged to you or me, gentler reader, the commmunity would have already stripped its blighted eyesore from us and turned it over to a responsible developer who probably has the proper financing for an elegant strip mall.

But with millions of dollars available for defense, the local government must observe some decorum.

Great thinker Sheryl Crow proposes:

“Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating.

“I propose a limitation be put on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting.”

Obviously, further development would identify whether this limitation would be enforced by camera or an actual enforcement official in the bathroom with you.