Japanese WWII soldiers found in Mindanao

It is hard to comprehend the kind of loyalty the Japanese Empire inspired. Part of me feels sorry for them, but another part respects their commitment.

The elderly men said they wanted to return to Japan, but feared facing a court martial, the Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun reported.

They are the first World War II soldiers found since 1974, when former Imperial Army Maj. Gen. Hiroo Onoda, now 83, was found in a Philippine jungle and returned to Japan, unaware that the war had ended 29 years previously.

Why is it that politicians like statistics so much. Not only do they use them, they use them badly. Any statistics used in a political argument are suspect. Maybe they are real, but they are still usually misleading. If someone told me it was going to rain I’d give them the benefit of the doubt. If a politician claimed to have checked with 480 meteorologists and there was 90 percent chance of rain, then it’s time to head for the beach.

Recently a number of politicians have been using statistics on the abortion rate to make political points. Unfortunately they aren’t telling the whole truth.Factcheck.org has the real story.

But unfortunately, in the last few years, while we are engaged in an ideological debate instead of one that uses facts and evidence and commonsense, the rate of abortion is on the rise in some states. In the three years since President Bush took office, 8 states saw an increase in abortion rates (14.6% average increase), and four saw a decrease (4.3% average), so we have a lot of work still ahead of us.
Sen. Hillary Clinton, Remarks by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to the NYS Family Planning Providers – January 24, 2005

We’d like to make abortion rare. You know that abortions have gone up 25 percent since George Bush was president?
Howard Dean, Meet the Press – May 22, 2005

These are good examples of the use of this kind of statistical usage. The numbers are quoted without clearly defining what they stand for. Is this locally, or national? They are from a small study, but the speakers imply they are national trends. While this isn’t a clear falsehood, there is such a thing as the lie of omission. I’m sick and tired of listening to these people bicker over numbers that everyone in the argument is using incorrectly. I haven’t checked with any authorities, but I’m 99 percent sure we need to improve our level or political dialogue in this country.

The good news I got this weekend was that my truck is fairly difficult to break into. Took two professionals a good twenty minutes to get in, and this was without the annoying alarm turned on. I’d like to think that the alarm blaring would have slowed down a thief a little. Probably wishful thinking.

The bad news shaved several years off my life as well adding a significant amount of gray hair. My two year old daughter with the help of a unknowing passerby locked herself in my truck. I would have just broken the window, but it was running with the climate control on so other than frightened she was OK. I was afraid the breaking glass was dangerous in it’s own right and decided to take the long way. I was loading the truck in a Home Depot parking lot with the engine running. It had been sitting in the sun and I was trying to cool it off before my wife and daughter had to get in. My wife, Doc, set the little one in the back seat as a prelude to strapping her in the car seat. The little munchkin jumped into the front seat, and we now know hit the power lock button. Doc retrieved her, strapped her into the back, and stood by the open door. Everything would have been fine, but a passerby pushed the door closed to get his cart by… “Locked, what do you mean locked?” The police were prompt, professional, and with the help of a Home Depot employee managed to get a thin piece of wood through the not quite closed door far enough to hit the power window button. Repeated attempts to “jimmy” the door had already failed. I’m too old for this %$#@!

Don’t you hate it when you get caught being wrong? In “My Lions vs. Midgets?” I was wrong. I like a number of other people got taken in by a spoof of the BBC News site. I should have known better.

Snopes has the true story. Lion in Wait.

If this isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen, I’m not sure what is.

The fight was called in only 12 minutes, after which 28 fighters were declared dead, while the other 14 suffered severe injuries including broken bones and lost limbs, rendering them unable to fight back.

How could someone possibly think this was a good idea. I’m especially curious about how somebody convinced the midgets to participate. Even more strange was the Cambodian government’s approval of the bout (or is that rout) in exchange for a commission.

The Cambodian Government allowed the fight to take place, under the condition that they receive a 50% commission on each ticket sold, and that no cameras would be allowed in the arena.

This of course turned out to be a spoof. See Got Spoofed?

Ward Churchill Gets Slapped Again

Sir George at The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler has another post about Ward Churchill. Sir George really has a way with words.

Meanwhile his new Indian name is “Rotting White Carcass”

The United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians wasn’t any kinder. They don’t seem to be quite as excited about having Mr. Churchill claim membership as Mr. Churchill seems to think.

“The United Keetoowah Band would like to make it clear that Mr. Churchill IS NOT a member of the Keetoowah Band and was only given an honorary ‘associate membership’ in the early 1990s because he could not prove any Cherokee ancestry.

The tribe said that all of Churchill’s “past, present and future claims or assertions of Keetoowah ‘enrollment,’ written or spoken, including but not limited to; biographies, curriculum vitae, lectures, applications for employment, or any other reference not listed herein, are deemed fraudulent by the United Keetoowah Band.”

Do you think he got the hint? Somehow I doubt it.

I’ve mentioned Mr. Churchill several times before, here are two of the posts. Academic Freedom and No, the issue is integrity.

Are Democratic politics in bed with the media or what. Someone in Mr. Bush’s camp may or may not have outed a woman’s CIA status (which may or may not have been a secret, several years ago and it’s still in the news once a month at least. A leading Democrat outs a judicial nominee’s FBI record and he’s free and clear. Ignore the fact that even the nominee can’t see the file. Ignore the fact that it’s a breach of ethics rules to do that. Ignore the fact that the Democrat in question doesn’t even have authorization to see the man’s FBI file. Breaches of ethics all over the place, easily documented, he even made a public announcement about the content of the file he isn’t supposed to have looked at… Silence. If a few conservative writers weren’t covering it, nobody would be.

He’s Gone Berserk – By Tony Snow
At the risk of piling on, it appears that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, in the latest of a series of strained attempts to justify a judicial-filibuster strategy that annihilates Senate traditions, has utterly destroyed the civility that once prevailed in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body.

Reid took the floor to decry Republican attempts to restore the old traditions of voting yes-or-no on a president’s judicial nominees. About two-thirds of the way through a 30-minute talk, he added the following ad-libbed passage: “Henry Saad would have been filibustered, anyway. He’s one of those nominees. All you need to do is have a member go upstairs and look at his confidential report from the FBI, and think we all would agree there is a problem there.”

Let us count the sins: (1) It is verboten for Senators to jibber about FBI files. (2) Harry Reid does not, under Senate rules, have the right to see those files. He is neither a member of the Judiciary Committee nor a representative of Saad’s home state of Michigan. If he actually has read the Saad file, he could face an Ethics Committee inquiry. (3) FBI files are like great dumpsters for gossip, and they are filled with notoriously unreliable drivel. They contain everything anybody has told any FBI agent about the person in question. There is no attempt to separate truth from falsehood, or to discount rumors passed by people with ulterior motives. (4) Reid’s smear is literally unanswerable. Saad himself has not seen the file. Neither he nor his closest associates have any idea what Reid is talking about. And, having already undergone three rounds of FBI scrutiny for other jobs, he has never been confronted before with such detail-free innuendo.

Reid cites FBI file on judicial pick – By Charles Hurt
Furthermore, a “Memorandum of Understanding” covering the use of FBI background reports limits access to committee members and the nominee’s home-state senators. Mr. Reid would fall into neither category.

The selective attention of the modern media constantly astounds me. How do you look at yourself in the mirror in the morning after ignoring something like this? Do you just sit at your desk and think “instead of the brand new story about ethics violations, why don’t I cover this anti-Bush story from a year ago for the 4,803 time? Moronic buffoons.

I admit it. I was curious about The Huffington Post. What first got my attention wasn’t the thought of celebrity bloggers, but that Ms. Huffington was looking for $500,000 in investments. For a website? I also heard claims her site was to be an alternative to The Drudge Report. I figured I’d take a look to see what all of the hype was about. If Jim Lampley’s Biggest story of our lives is an example of Ms. Huffington’s quality bloggers, then I don’t think Mr. Drudge has anything to worry about.

Oddsmakers consulted exit polling and knew what it meant and acknowledged in their oddsmaking at that moment that John Kerry was winning the election.

And he most certainly was, at least if the votes had been fairly and legally counted. What happened instead was the biggest crime in the history of the nation, and the collective media silence which has followed is the greatest fourth-estate failure ever on our soil.

Mr. Lampley offers very little in the way of sources or figures, but he spouts a lot of gibberish about stealing elections. I thought we were beyond the whole “They stole the election!” conspiracy theory after the 2000 elections, but apparently not. Mr. Lampley might want to stick to sports, or maybe just to TV. While I’m by no means a professional blogger, I try to follow the general rules of blogging etiquette. Namely – cite sources. You don’t just make grand claims, you back them up with sources or you don’t make them.

I’m not one to nitpick a person’s website, to each his own is my usual thought, but I can’t help but notice that Ms. Huffington’s site doesn’t allow trackbacks or comments. Makes you think that maybe she doesn’t want constructive criticism. That’s almost… undemocratic.

Deadline Hollywood Arianna’s Blog Blows

I loved the title, but the article is humorous too.

What is it about Clinton era politicians and scandals? The obvious solutions to most political scandals is to either speak up or shut up. Speak up as in spill your guts about everything that happened and possibly apologize. Or shut up, say nothing publicly and end the event as soon and quietly as possible. Yet a significant number of politicians from the 90’s seem to think the solution is to draw out the scandal as long as possible, while avoiding anything that might resolve the issues.

An IRS Cover-Up? Senators Dorgan and Kerry try to block a report on Clinton-era abuses.

Henry Cisneros’ lawyers have drawn this trial on for years by among other things filing “more than 190 motions and appeals”. Mr. Cisneros has drawn out this painfully long scandal as long as he can, now some other politicians are trying to end it for him without a final report being written. In typical political fashion “North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan and co-sponsors John Kerry and Richard Durbin” among others are trying to make sure Mr. Cisneros doesn’t have any consequences for his actions. Mr. Kerry summed it up best when he said “I’m sure Mr. Cisneros feels really really sorry for his actions, and that’s all we can ask for.”

OK, I made up that last quote.