Mark Bossingham

News from the East

Don't mess with young Japanese girls
   
    Today's cautionary wind blows to us from the Mainichi Daily News Interactive, published April 29.

    PERSONALLY I find watching young women putting on their make-up on the train, if a bit self-absorbed, entertaining. However, it is a ''social issue" here, with many older Japanese objecting. Here's one objector who probably now wishes she'd left well enough alone.
    An elderly woman was injured in a Tokyo subway station after being hit by a moving train when a young woman whom she had berated for doing her makeup in public shoved her, police said Thursday.
    Akimi Odashima, 22, from Tokyo's Meguro-ku, stands accused of inflicting injuries on the victim.
    Odashima was sitting on a bench and powdering her face at Hiroo subway station on Tokyo Metro's Hibiya Line at about 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday.
    The 65-year-old woman from Kawasaki reportedly chastised Odashima for using a powder puff on the platform and walked off. Odashima followed the elderly woman and shoved her from behind.
    "When I was powdering my face, she told me, 'Don't put on makeup around here.' So I followed her to get an explanation and then shoved her," officers quoted Odashima as saying.

News from the East

Train derailment kills 56, hurts 440

Today's ill wind blows to us from the pages of The Daily Yomiuri, published April 26.

THIS WAS simply a horrible accident. I always feel completely safe on Japanese trains. The idea of a train smashing into my apartment is too bizarre to be scary.
    A seven-car train on the JR Fukuchiyama Line derailed and crashed into an apartment building Monday morning in Amagasaki, Hyogo Prefecture, killing 56 passengers and injuring 440, as of Monday night, police and other sources said.
    The front four cars on the train, which was carrying about 600 passengers, ran off the tracks before the front two cars slammed into a nine-story apartment building east of the tracks after ripping through a parking lot on the north side of the building.
    The front cars were crushed against the building, leaving many passengers trapped for hours. In the evening, rescue workers confirmed four passengers alive inside the first car, which slammed into the first floor of the building.
    The train's 23-year-old driver, Ryujiro Takami, was believed to have been trapped in the first car, according to the police.

In your face

THE MORE I post, the more amused I get with The Associated Press' bumbling attempts to insert editorial opinion into the news. They are too untutored to even spin well.
    In an otherwise fine piece by John Lumpkin on Bush's appointment (subject to laughable whining by hypocritical Democrat and craven Republican senators) of Marine Corps Gen. Peter Pace to chair the joints chiefs, I run into this asinine para:
    The combat operations Pace has played a direct role in - Vietnam, Somalia, and the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq - are not regarded as among America's clearest military victories.
    No shit. This is, of course, straight out my generation's playbook. All post-Vietnam conflicts are suspect. Our father's (the Greatest Generation) war, WWII, is revered in an almost perverse way by baby boomers (The Worst Generation). I'm not even going to blame Lumpkin for the immaterial and utterly out of place sentence, it smells to high heaven of editorial insertion, also known as the copydesk screwing the reporter.

2nd Avenue Cesspool

YOU CAN file this article about crooked Kofi in the No Kidding drawer.
    NEW YORK -- Two senior investigators with the U.N. committee probing corruption in the oil-for-food program have resigned in protest, saying they think a report that cleared Kofi Annan of meddling in the $64 billion operation was too soft on the secretary-general, a panel member confirmed yesterday.

AP and Globe – Comedic incompetence

ONE OF the reasons journalism doesn't pay very well is that stupidity is not a hinderance to employment. A nicer way to say this is talent is not required. Semi-literate individuals are hired by papers in America every day and paid about what they are worth--not much.
    Speaking of lousy journalists, the Boston Globe probably has more than its fair share. Certainly management is a truckful of agenda-driven sniveling liberals. It gives me great pleasure to report these fools ran a story a couple of days ago about the great baby seal hunt in Canada. You know the one--the cruel white guys crushing the skulls of baby seals, splattering blood everywhere. It's not exactly new.
    But the Globe managed to find a new angle! They printed their reporter's story of the hunt horribilis. They next day they got a call from some confused Canadian. I imagine the conversation went like this:
    "Yo, what's up with the seal hunt story?"
    "What's wrong with it, you pig."
    "Well, nothin' I guess, except the hunt was called off. There was too much fog. It didn't happen."
    "...hmmm, uhhh, can I get back to you on that?"
    What a bunch of asses. The hunt didn't happen, they printed a story on a fictional event that simply fit their dumbass liberal template. It is an embarrassment to work in the same trade with these fools.
    Idiocy report #2. This one takes little explanation. Check the headline: "House Ethics Panel to Probe Tom Delay.''
    Now read the lead:
     WASHINGTON (AP) - The Republican chairman of the House ethics committee offered on Wednesday to begin an investigation of Majority Leader Tom DeLay to end a stalemate that has kept the panel from functioning this year.
    Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash., made the proposal at a news conference flanked by three of the four other Republicans on the ethics panel. The evenly divided committee also has five Democrats.
    Senior committee Democrat Alan Mollohan of West Virginia quickly rejected the offer, saying his party would continue blocking the panel from operating unless investigative rules imposed by Republicans were changed.
    If you don't see a contradiction between the headline and the "story" congratulations--you are qualified to work for either The Associated Pres of The Boston Globe!

News from the East

Death sentence for shoplifting

Today's ill wind blows to us from the Mainichi Daily News Interactive, published April 19.

A COUPLE morons working as security guards killed a woman caught allegedly shoplifitng textbooks.
    OSAKA -- A woman accused of shoplifting died after security guards at a major bookshop tackled her to the ground, police said.
    A plain-clothes guard noticed the woman carrying more than 10 textbooks as she left the Asahiya bookstore near JR Osaka Station in Osaka's Kita-ku at about 8 p.m. on Monday, and tried to question her.
    After the woman, who looked to be some 30 years old, ignored him, the guard called a colleague.
    The two guards then wrestled her to the ground near the store. Officers from a local police station arrived shortly after and found the woman had fallen senseless.
    She was taken to a hospital where doctors declared her dead about one hour later.
    The woman wore a black, short-sleeve shirt, black trousers and green shoes, police said.

Screw the Chinese

IN WHAT are clearly riots sponsored by the Chinese Communist government, the Chicoms are doing everything short of invasion to intimidate the Japanese. This isn't anything new, just count the missiles pointed at Taiwan.
    This bloated, overrated country with an economy no bigger than Italy's is using any pretext to toss its weight around. Let's not forget this is a country with a one-voice, state-run media with a single mission: to keep the current dynasty in power. And if that means creating "spontaneous" demos, so be it.
    Indeed, if a single Falun Gong protester were to dare stick her head up in Tiananman Square, the secret police would drag her away in a nanosecond for torture and imprisonment. But they can't seem to stop the Japanese Embassy from being stoned and Japanese shops from being destroyed.
    Let's also not be deceived by high-rise buildings and a few hotties in designer minis. Most of the billion-plus people are ignorant bumpkins who can expect a bullet in the back of the head if they mutter even a peep of protest. This is a rapacious, dangerous nation that will stop at nothing until it holds complete sway over Asia.
    The Red Chinese must, and at some point, will be stopped. Let's hope they stop themselves. Best case scenario: Dynastic upheaval. It's their history: Marauding bands of competing warlords or religious sects killing everyone in sight while the population starves.
    The Japanese most assuredly should be on the U.N. Security Council. They've earned it many times over. It remains a mystery why the Chinese, supine and helpless during, throughout, and at the end of WWII, are. The very scrutable bullies in Beijing are deserving of the same respect we reserve for racist Robert Mugabe and craven Jacques Chirac.
    Finally, this is the nation that the EU wants to sell weapons to. The upside is they will probably use the guns on themselves.

UPDATE
THE SCREWBALLS in "The Middle Kingdom" are still having their hissy fit. They claim the the Japanese "hurt their feelings." Sort of like the Chicoms hurt the Tibetans feelings by murdering them en masse and hurt Vietnamese feelings in 1979 by invading their country or hurt the Indians feelings by invading that country in 1968. Bottom line: Get over it and get a life. If you don't somebody's going to cut off your oil supply and we'll see how long your stuffed-animal, crappy T-shirt economy survives.

Delay a lesson for Frist

JEFFREY BELL in The Weekly Standard does an excellent job explaining why the Blue State media is out to get Tom Delay and what the stakes are for Republicans who fail to take the fight to the enemy. The money quote:
       As he begins his effort to force the Senate to permit a majority to approve new conservative judges--inevitably to culminate in a Supreme Court nomination fight--Bill Frist will soon have to choose whether, like DeLay, to operate on the Red State side of the divide, expecting and getting no praise from older Blue State media. If Frist does so successfully, he is in the game to succeed President Bush as the Red State candidate. If he fails or turns aside, the Blue State media will dislike him less, but his presidential hopes will almost certainly be history.
    Prior to reading the article, I sent a less artful email to Bill Frist, saying, in essence, you let us down now and you are toast. I have no patience with Republicans that kowtow to Newsweek, Time and the Washington Post. I will do all I can to make them pay a price if they go wobbly on us.

Marcy won't pay (for her appalling prose)

THE ASSOCIATED Press doesn't think people should be "forced'' to pay for things they buy. But let's leave that aside, and concentrate on the the story produced on the bankruptcy legislation just passed by Congress. The AP's hack reporter Marcy Gordon has concocted some hilarious graphs that I suspect she expects us to take seriously. Sorry, babe. However, I can suggest a remedial logic class or two. Let's examine some of her more amusing attempts to, I would say deceive, but her writing is so patently absurd, I can't even give her credit for that.
    1. She starts simply enough with the poor, the downtrodden, the "anxious" yearning not to pay for the shit they bought:
    WASHINGTON (AP) - A crucial deadline looms a half-year away for thousands of anxious Americans weighed down by credit card and other debt following congressional passage of a measure making it tougher to erase obligations in bankruptcy.
    Hell, makes sense to me. Why pay when these "anxious" spenders can go to court and a judge will let them legally steal the stuff?  And thereby screwing everybody else that actually pays for what they buy.
    2. But that's standard boilerplate. Let's watch the math-challenged Marcy total up the votes in the two houses and reach the conclusion that the Democrats really didn't mean it when they voted for the bill:
    The bankruptcy measure requires people with incomes above a certain level to pay credit card charges, medical bills and other obligations under a court-ordered bankruptcy plan. It passed the House on a 302-126 vote on Thursday, a month after the Senate voted 74-25 following two weeks of fierce partisan debate.
    Hmm, looks pretty much like a slam dunk. The bill passes by about a 3-1 margin in both houses "after two weeks of fierce partisan debate." Guess the "fierce partisans" must have changed their mind, or maybe she's referring to partisans from another planet. Incidentally, notice how Marcy avoids telling the reader what the income level will be for those subject to Chapter 13 proceedings (you gotta pay something) vice her preferred Chapter 7 (license to steal). She will get to the numbers, but is hoping the reader will turn to another story before they get to all those nasty details.
    3. Again she tries to pin it on Republicans, ignoring the vote she reported earlier:
In a bitter scene on the House floor, Democrats - most of whom opposed the legislation ...
    Well, clearly "most" Democrats didn't oppose the legislation when it came time to vote unless there were a lot fewer Democrats in Congress than there were yesterday.
    4. Now, let's jump to the bottom of the story and find out who the legislation targets, a reality she would rather not reveal, but can't avoid:
    Those with income above the state's median income who can pay at least $6,000 over five years - $100 a month - would be forced into Chapter 13, where a judge would then order a repayment plan.
    Well, let's translate that. People with incomes in the 51st percentile in a state. OK, people who make more money than half the people in their state, would be FORCED to pay the enormous sum of $6,000 over five years. God, that is cruel! Some evil Republican judge is going to force, force, these deadbeat thieves into paying, holy shit, a hundred bucks a month.
    Now let's back up and uproot one of Marcy's more glaring logical screw-ups:
    Opponents say the change would fall especially hard on low-income working people, single mothers, minorities and the elderly and would remove a safety net for those who have lost their jobs or face mounting medical bills.
    Low-income? Remember they make more than 50 percent of the people in their state. Single mothers? Minorities? Again, these people are better off than half their neighbors. It's those voodoo words--Single Mothers, Minorities, the Elderly. Well, shit, who cares if they have millions, why should they pay? They are Single Mothers, Minorities, the Elderly. Voodoo Journalism!
    No, Marcy, I don't think you are an idiot. But you clearly think your readers are fools. If our reporters turned in such pieces of illogical crap, we would strangle them on the spot. Marcy, please apply for the AP's Corrupt Writing class. Or, for a fee, I will tutor you in how to spin the news without making an ass out of yourself.
 

Hey AP! Where's the story?

THIS AP story should be headlined, "Baffle them with bullshit''. Here's the lead:
    WASHINGTON (AP) - House Republicans brushed aside the Democrats' latest attempt to rewrite ethics rules on Thursday, one day after a closed-door discussion that touched on the perils of political arrogance.
    Now go through the story and try to figure out what the the "brushed aside" Democratic attempt was. I have no idea, maybe you can figure it out.