Something just occurred to me. In the past six months, we’ve gotten all these leaks about blatantly illegal spying programs carried out by the Bush administration. I was contemplating the fact that the only reason they have not resulted in impeachment hearings is because the Republicans control Congress and will not allow any investigation or official acknowledgment that the programs are in fact illegal and unconstitutional.

Then I considered if maybe these would resurface next year if Democrats won control of Congress (which, despite the Democrats’ best efforts, is looking more and more likely), but I realized that the right wing had invested way too much time and effort into establishing the “we’ve already gotten past that, so there’s nothing there” mentality commonly used by politicians to great success.

How lucky for Bush then, that these were leaked before Democrats took control. And then it hit me: what if luck had nothing to do with it? What if the White House saw a great enough chance that Democrats would gain enough control next year to make something out of all this, and decided to “immunize” themselves? After all, if these revelations had come about with a Democratic Congress, there would have been immediate investigations. Even if the Republicans still held the Senate, a House investigation would hold enough power that it might not protect against impeachment, and certainly would be incredibly damaging to the White House.

So how likely is it that the leaking of these programs was directed by the Bush administration as a way of safeguarding themselves? The leaks have come out at times not too damaging for Bush–beginning with the initial pre-Christmas release, which could not have been better-timed to avoid media scrutiny (the “take out the trash Friday” of the entire year). They have been leaked bit by bit and not all at once, spaced out almost conveniently, giving time for Republicans to downplay, excuse, and tough out the worst of the storm before the next tidbit was released, allowing for the acclimation process to dilute and legitimize each revelation before the next came out.

As a bonus, they got to be indignantly offended at every leak, branding media organizations they do not favor, as well as their political opponents, as traitors. We accepted these over-the-top accusations as Republican chest-beating and as probable projection–but it also brings to mind the Shakespearean adage that the GOP “protests too much, methinks.” Even for the GOP, recent protests have been too much, adding to my suspicion that this is more a political game than an actual excitement over national security being violated.

Note also the campaign against Democrats this election year being focused on the “fear” that Democrats would start investigating Bush, leading some Democrats to state positively that they would not do so.

Maybe I’m giving the Bush administration far too much credit. However, the course of events have played out in a way that would be highly beneficial to them in the event of a Democratic win this Fall.

Let me start off by pointing out that the title of this post quite accurately describes what happened to me today, and not in any metaphoric sense. I was literally struck by lightning a few hours ago.

Of course, I was not struck directly–had I been, I would not be sitting at home right now. Let me explain what happened.

This morning, I decided to do some birding around the bay. I was going to make a bit of a day of it, starting at the Tokyo Minato Yacho Koen near Haneda Airport and then making my way over to Kasai Rinkai, near Tokyo Disneyland. The weather was sunny and hot–around 100 degrees when I left.

When I got to the bird park, there were clouds off in the distance, but it still seemed nice. Not many birds were there, however (I’ll do a birding report later). I did manage to get some nice shots of a Little Ringed Plover when the thunder really got started. It had been thundering for maybe fifteen minutes, but not very frequently. But then it really started going, maybe three or four strikes a minute. While some parts of the sky were still bright, dark clouds from the north were starting to cover the sky above. With my rainsuit stashed in my scooter (it’s always there, for instances like this) on the other side of the park, I figured it was time to get the hell out of Dodge and get to my suit before I got soaked.

Halfway out, the lightning was going pretty steady, bolts flashing all around–which for me, is pretty cool. I love lightning and thunder, and still do. In fact, I’ve always wanted to get a good recording of that sheet-ripping sound of nearby lightning. So while I walked out of the park, I had my camera on, and was using the voice notation feature as an audio recorder, in case a good peal of thunder presented itself.

At that point, I crossed the bridge which goes over the railroad tracks and roads that lead in to the adjacent shipping/distribution center. I saw a couple with a video camera on the middle of the bridge, and asked them if they were filming birds. They said they were filming the planes going into Haneda. Just after I walked by them, it happened.

Now, remember I said I was recording at that time. Well, here it is:

Me getting struck by lightning (MP3 version, 375 KB)
Me getting struck by lightning (WAV version, 1.3 MB)

Those are two different versions of the same recording. By the way, it sounds best when listened to with headphones and the sound way up. When you listen to it, you’ll hear sounds you may not recognize without introduction. First, you’ll hear thunder in the background, a previous strike that was still echoing. You’ll hear a rhythmic crunching sound, which is me walking on the gravel bridge; I take about five steps before it hits me. Then you’ll hear a static crackle, then me yelping in shock as the lightning hits me, then the crack of immediate thunder accompanying the lightning strike. Then you hear my reaction, and I speak to the couple I just passed on the bridge, as a flock of starlings flushed by the lightning can be heard flying overhead.

Here’s a longer version (MP3, 580 KB) with more audio before and after the strike. It’s also censored–bleeped when I cussed, a version I made for my class (of course I’m going to play it for them). In this version, you hear me talking to the couple before the strike, and you can also hear a few more comments by me as I walk off the bridge.

As I mentioned in the recording, I felt the lightning strike. That was the yelp I made; I felt an electric shock in my left foot, which I presume was the one touching the bridge as I walked. I did not see the lightning bolt, disappointingly–it struck behind me–but I did notice the strobe effect from the flash all around me. Since I didn’t see it directly, I don’t know how far away it was, but it was probably within ten feet of me, maybe hitting the railing of the bridge. But consider: I was wearing rubber-soled shoes, it was dry, and I was on gravel, and still I got a strong electric shock to my foot.

At that point, I just figured that it was a really good idea to get out of there, so I did, making it back to my bike just after the rain started. I was going to hide out in a tunnel until the lightning stopped, but by the time the rain started, the lightning had stopped, so I headed on home. As it turned out, the rain only lasted fifteen or twenty minutes, but I was wet enough not to want to go on with the birding.

Besides, once you get hit by lightning, isn’t that pretty much going to be the high point of the day?

Via Pharyngula, here is a recently stated editorial policy from a long-established publication:

As politics go, we’re surprised so many readers expect us or any publication to provide “balance,” which reflects a belief in the fallacy that there are two equally valid sides to every story. You see this in the debate over global warming and evolution. Thousands of scientists stand on one side of the issue, recognizing that global warming is a problem and that evolution is firmly established, while only a few detractors stand on the other.

Now, that’s integrity, intelligence, and editorial virtue for you: acknowledge the facts, not the politics. So, where did this paragon of reasoned discernment come from? Who is responsible for having the courage to present a reality-based policy for presenting the fact? Was it the New York Times? The Washington Post? The Wall Street Journal? Nope. It was Playboy.

There is no link provided, so I can’t verify this–but in today’s world of journalism, somehow this would not at all surprise me.

A Japanese judge has ruled that all movies made before `1953 are now in the public domain. A 2004 law extended copyrights for another 20 years, but the judge ruled that the law did not act retroactively, meaning that any movie that went into the public domain before that time will stay in the public domain.

You can fully expect this ruling to be challenged. Film studios have gone to extreme measures to ensure that they hold perpetual rights to content, using the legal fiction that a corporation is a virtually immortal person. In the United States, copyright creep has been going on for some time, the most recent having been a new 20-year extension to the pre-existing law that said copyrights last for 50 years after the death of the author (or 75 years for a corporate authorship); this extension was called the Mickey Mouse Protection Act by many, as it was seen to be a means of allowing Disney to hold on to exclusive rights of Mickey Mouse and other characters.

So, if you live in Japan, go ahead and copy all those golden oldies like Gone with the Wind, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Wizard of Oz, and sell them on the street corner–it’s all legal now.

---

Taku Yamasaki of Japan’s conservative LDP party has made public statements recently to the effect that it would be unconstitutional for Japan to use its military forces to attack North korean Military bases. Of course, he’s the same crazy guy who has suggested that official visits by politicians to Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined, are also “strongly suspected” to be unconstitutional.

Japan has been considering possible pre-emptive attacks since North Korea seems to have both atomic weapons and the missiles needed to send them to Japan. Japan’s constitution forbids any military action except for self-defense (hence Japan’s military bearing the name “Self-Defense Forces”).

The problem: “self-defense” is a slippery slope. Consider, for example, that Japanese right-wingers often call WWII, including Pearl Harbor, a “pre-emptive attack” intended wholly in the spirit of “self-defense.” As Bush has aptly demonstrated, as long as you have a good propaganda machine, any war can be justified as “self-defense.”

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Use a gun, pay ¥50,000: a Japanese police officer in Nagasaki was in on the questioning of a man suspected in a minor crime (removing the door of a police box). Now, we’ve all heard about Japanese police officers using violent force to elicit confessions from suspects, causing a great many innocent people to be imprisoned while the guilty parties go free. This case seems to be a classic example of that.

The officer, named Norihiko Irie, got fed up when the suspect professed his innocence. So Irie unholstered his gun and pointed it at the man, threatening him with deadly force. Apparently, Irie also put the gun and five bullets on the desk in front of the man, and neighbors to the police box where the incident took place say that he was also walking around screaming and uttering nonsensical remarks, like shouting the word “Mongolian!”

Later it was discovered that Irie had argued with the man a few days earlier over the man’s driving, and had called the suspect and perhaps another man to the police box to accuse him of removing the police box door as well. It also turned out that Irie had been accused earlier of inappropriate sexual conduct (fondling) by a woman who came to the police box to report lost property.

After the incident with the gun, Irie was brought up on charges of “suspicion of committing acts of violence as a public official” and for “violating the Swords and Firearms Control Law.” He denied ever pointing the gun at anyone. Although Irie was convicted, the judge suspended his three-year sentence, punishing him with nothing more than a ¥50,000 fine, saying that “There is no fear of him committing the same crime again, and he made an apology.”

Oh, well, he made an apology. Yeah, I know that counts for more in Japan than elsewhere, but we are talking about a public officer of the peace threatening someone with deadly force to elicit a confession. Somewhere, I think a line was crossed. Hell, the press reports don’t even make it clear that he was even fired. He was transferred from the police box in January, shortly after the crime, but no more word than that. I would only hope that someone convicted of a crime like that would not be allowed to remain employed by the police, and absolutely never allowed near a gun again.

I’ve been trying to lose weight this year, and have been pretty successful. I lost almost 10 kilos since the beginning of the year before I hit a plateau; in the past few weeks I’ve been on a stricter diet-and-exercise regime, and I was gaining ground–I lost two more kilos in that time. But early this week, I found that I had put those two kilos back on almost overnight. What the…?

It turns out the culprit was… pretzels. I bought some at Costco last weekend, seeing as how they were low-calorie, low-fat, etc.–a good snack, it seemed. At first I was stunned, and couldn’t believe that eating a small number of pretzels could increase my weight by several times the full weight of the pretzels themselves. I was still puzzling over it this morning until I figured it out: pretzels are salty.

These particular pretzels were very salty, in fact. That’s OK with me–I love salty stuff. But a Biology lesson from back in high school flashed through my mind: when you increase the amount of salt in your body, your body increases your fluid retention in order to balance the saline concentration. I did a quick Google search and confirmed it. So eating lots of salt means you retain fluids, and gain weight. Damn! And I like pretzels, too–I thought I’d found a new good snack.

The good news is that it’s fluid weight, not fatty weight, which means (I hope) that staying away from salt and drinking a lot of water should help flush the salt from my system, and the weight should fall off rather easily.

Surprised the hell outta me, though.

Some press outlets bought into the White House lie, simply regurgitating White House press releases:

An unexpectedly steep rise in tax revenues from corporations and the wealthy is driving down the budget deficit this year,… White House officials are expected to announce that the tax receipts will be about $250 billion above last year and that the deficit will be about $100 billion less than projected six months ago.

The rising tide in tax payments has been building for months, but the increased scale is surprising even seasoned budget analysts and making it easier for the administration and Congress to finesse the past year’s run-up in spending.

Tax revenues are climbing twice as fast as the administration predicted in February, so fast that the budget deficit could decline this year.

But then, a few media outlets actually noticed the dog and pony show:

When President Bush releases the traditional midsummer update on the budget today, he is expected to announce that federal revenue has soared above predicted levels and that the deficit is headed for a welcome decline from earlier estimates — as much as 30%, or $125 billion, below the level projected just five months ago.

And the president will likely attribute the windfall to his tax cuts, which the administration says are stimulating economic activity and generating the torrent of tax revenue.

But the apparent good news will not strike some economists as surprising: This will be the third year in a row that the administration put forth relatively gloomy deficit forecasts early on, only to announce months later that things had turned out better than expected. To some skeptics, it’s beginning to look like an economic version of the old “expectations” game.

In short, the White House has been underperforming, and after 5 years, still hasn’t reached the revenue levels Clinton attained in 2000. So to hoodwink the media and the people, they first predict much lower revenue than expected, then they act like the numbers that come out are miraculously high.

What’s more, the White House attributes the jump to all those tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. See? It worked!

Actually, no it didn’t. The increase in profits came from outsourcing of labor and paying less than ever before for domestic workers, cutting corners and maximizing profits. The irony is, had taxes not been slashed for corporations and the rich, they would not have lessened their attempts to make money at all (if anything, they would have tried harder in order to meet their goals, but most likely the end result would have been the same), and the tax revenue would have been much higher. Without all those tax cuts, we probably would have a much smaller deficit than now.

As always, it’s perception the politicians play on. Reality is a joke in those circles.

All researchers, students as well as professional scholars, need to assess the quality of any work scrupulously before using and citing it. … Not all sources are equally reliable or of equal quality. In reading and evaluating potential sources, you should not assume that something is truthful or trustworthy just because it appears in print or is on the Internet.

–MLA Handbook, 1.6.1

I teach this to my students, and try to follow it myself, of course. Whenever possible, I cite reliable and non-biased information sources. When I have no other choice, I will cite a biased source if the information given is otherwise verifiable, else I note the bias of the source inline. Once, I almost published a blog post on Michael Jackson commenting that Johnny Depp in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory totally creeped him out, before I realized that the source I was relying on was a satire site. So I can almost understand the reason why this guy made such a stupid mistake:

Here are some quotes from a pro-abortion person, Miss Caroline Weber, who wrote an article at The Onion online magazine.

Okay, see his problem already? Now, maybe this guy is just not all that cool, so he doesn’t recognize the most popular satire web site on the Internet. You might think that he himself is doing satire, but a close read of the blog entry and the site in general show that this guy is not running a satire site, and the post takes the Onion article completely seriously.

As I said, I almost fell for that Michael Jackson story, but I think I had better excuses. First of all, the story I almost fell for was listed in Google News, and did not at that time bear the “satire” label it was supposed to. Second, criticizing Johnny Depp in that role would be exactly the kind of stupid thing you’d expect a nutball like Michael Jackson to do. And third, I started writing the post based on the headline and first paragraph–often written to appear legitimate so as to make the creeping takeoff funnier–and realized it was satire as I read on. This anti-abortion fellow has no such excuse. After all, even if he didn’t recognize The Onion as a satire rag in the first place, you’d think he’d catch on when he hit sentences like this one:

I’ve got an abortion to plan, and I just know it’s going to be the best non-anesthetized invasive uterine surgery ever!

But nope, he didn’t get it. In fact, he put that quote up at the top of his post as evidence that pro-choice advocates love abortion.

Of course, maybe this guy actually is doing satire. Maybe he wrote this blog for an entire year as if he were really an ardent pro-lifer just to set up for this one post. Maybe.

Or maybe this is simply indicative of how clueless right-to-lifers can be, and how their devotion to faith above all else severely atrophies their sense of reason. Maybe.

Nevertheless, I do feel a bit sorry for the guy, in a kind of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God sense. He’s now getting hammered with derisive comments, and so far has not commented back or made any note of his error. I think that not so many people saw it until just now–the post had 52 comments when I first saw it about an hour ago, and now it’s up to 67; he probably hasn’t had the chance to see any of it yet. I halfway expect he’ll simply take down the post when he checks his blog next time and sees all the comments. In that eventuality, I’ve archived the post, just in case.

Tip of the hat to Pharyngula, who got it from someone else.

Update: Well, the guy came back to his site, and responded. The response shows he’s even more clueless than ever. He still seems to think that the Onion article was real; he put the word “satire” in quotes to emphasize that he doesn’t quite believe it, and continues to address the Onion’s “author” by name, assuming it is a real person voicing a real view. He then goes on to claim he’s the one who’s smart here, saying the joke’s on everyone else, because he meets “women like her in the field all the time.”

He then relays a conversation where he recounts a “woman” in the “field” who approved of infanticide, according to his (apparently photographically recalled) retelling of the conversation. One can take his portrayal with as large a grain of salt as one wishes; I have heard this claim by many, many pro-lifers. They will tell you that they have met a large number of women at protests who approve of strangling newborn babies and so forth. Strange that I’ve talked to a lot of people on the pro-choice side and I’ve never met anyone even close to that, nor have I met anyone who has met anyone like that–apparently they are invisible to everyone except right-to-lifers. Not that such crazies don’t exist, but frankly, I doubt that this guy really met someone like that, or that the conversation–if it even took place–went anything like what he wrote. Also, to (a) claim that such a person would be in any way representative of the pro-choice movement, or (b) to claim that this excuses his inability to recognize clear satire, is, shall we say, pro-stupid.

July seems to be the month for new stuff to open in my neighborhood. I’m a bit out of central Tokyo, but not so far; it’s a nice spot. 25 km from Shinjuku on the west side of Tokyo, Inagi is just a half hour out by train, closer than Tachikawa or Hachioji, and as such is probably one of the closest-in open green hilly areas in the city. My apartment is a 20-minute walk, or a 5-minute bus ride (if you can catch it on time) from the station. There’s not much around here–a big supermarket/home center just a block away, but that’s about it. The closest video store is two stations down or a 7-minute drive (which always puzzled me–this is a big housing area, with maybe around 3-4000 units within 5 minute’s walking distance of where a video store could be, and more units being built–you’d think it’d be a bidding war for the rights to open a video rental place). So whenever anything new comes up, it’s worth noticing.

The first thing to open was the new central library for Inagi City, just a short hop away from my apartment. Their English-language material selection is not great, but not bad; not as good as my own college’s library (naturally, since we’re an American college), but there’s still stuff there. A limited video and CD selection (they have DVDs, but I imagine most are checked out at any given time; what was left included, strangely, lots of Elvis movies), a few English-language magazines, The Japan Times, and maybe 100-200 English-language books.

Their computer search feature, accessible online, is nice, but it has a major flaw: an author search will not reveal English-language materials, though a title search will. Still, I was able to reserve The DaVinci Code; it’ll be there for me maybe in a week or so.

Another new opening just this week was the main train station for the city. I haven’t used it for such a long time, it was now unrecognizable to me. The station itself got an upgrade, with escalators both ways on both tracks, and a new shopping building was added on, including a supermarket, drug store, bookstore, coffee shop (Tully’s, not Starbucks), 100-yen shop, a few restaurants, and a sports club on top.

Still no video rental store in sight. Ah well.

As I mentioned before, the new boulevard through the center of town also opened recently, and now I have found a way around the 5-traffic-light trap. Strangely, a one-lane side street running parallel not only is devoid of lights, but there are no stop signs at all in the direction I go. It takes me just past the traffic-light trap, so that works out quite nicely.

Of less consequence to me, a restaurant kitty-corner to the supermarket a block away from my house got torn down and a new senior center was built, with a swimming pool and other exercise and rehab facilities. Good for them. They also opened a new convenience store on one side of it, but I so rarely use those things now that it also doesn’t matter to me.

But that’s all the excitement out here in dullsville for the time being. But more will be built, especially as far as roads and public works. As someone pointed out to me recently, Japan’s version of the military-industrial complex is the government-public works complex. They’re always building some road or bridge or tunnel or new facility or some such, and it always takes them years and years and years to complete. For example, that new boulevard ain’t finished yet. The road comes up to just past the city center, but there is a 100-meter stretch still unfinished; when it is, the road will go straight through to Hashimoto, some 15 km down the way. But it will probably take them 3 years to finish that one little bit. Already, I’ve seen them out there working for the past year on that stretch with no discernible progress. That’s what construction in Japan is like.

If you’re a non-Japanese living in Japan and you fly home every once in a while, you may be getting screwed, according to this article. It seems that foreigners in Japan are getting charged more for airline tickets than Japanese are–perhaps significantly more. The same ticket that costs you ¥70,000 ($608) might be sold to a Japanese customer for just ¥57,000 ($495), a difference of 20%. This is done by selling the tickets via different agencies run by the same company.

In this case, the culprit is No. 1 Travel (the ones with incredibly stupid and annoying animated ads on CNN-J) and its sister agency, HIS Travel. No. 1 sells to foreign customers; HIS sells to Japanese.

A couple consisting of a Japanese woman and an Canadian man found this out when the woman called HIS and asked for a round-trip ticket to Los Angeles. She did not say who they were for (they were for her Canadian boyfriend), and the agency assumed it was for her. They gave her the ¥57,000 price. Later, when the agency found out who the ticket was for, they upped the price to ¥70,000.

So how could the agency justify this, when it is against the law in Japan to discriminate in pricing according to nationality or race? The HIS representative explained it like this:

According to Kinokuni, foreigners buy return tickets because they are cheaper than one-way tickets. They then return to their countries and don’t use the return portion.

“In this case the airline may charge us the full fare which means low profits or a loss.

“So in order to avoid the risk we restricted the tickets to Japanese only customers, who will definitely return to Japan.”

This explanation is, of course, utter BS. First of all, something is seriously fishy if if the airline sells a round-trip ticket for less than a one-way. Even if they can’t fill the return seat, there is no logical reason to charge more than the round trip ticket. Second, if someone buys a round-trip ticket, they cannot be forced to use both ways, and charging the agency for the passenger’s failure to do so is ludicrous; if it is not illegal, it should be made so.

Third, there is no reason why Japanese would not do the exact same thing; if a Japanese goes to live in the U.S. for longer than an open return ticket would allow for, there is nothing stopping them from pulling the same trick, and they likely do just that. Fourth, you cannot charge foreigners more based on a likelihood; not only are you discriminating by nationality and race, you’re also charging the majority of travelers for the transgressions of a minority.

Moreover, the price differential makes it fairly clear that they are charging every foreign passenger the full difference in price, when clearly most passengers (probably the vast majority) don’t pull out of the return. In short, the reason is bogus or it is being used to commit fraud.

Here’s what I’m going to do when I buy my next ticket: I will get a quote from No. 1–which I usually use–and ask a Japanese friend to get the identical flight pricing from HIS. If they differ, I am going to raise holy hell with them. Unfortunately, I will not have the option of telling them that I’m going elsewhere–I mean, I could, but in the past, all agencies that sell to foreigners sell at the same price. It’s not like this one agency does it and no one else does.

That does not mean that you can’t threaten them and give them hell for it.

I advise everyone else to do the same, unless you enjoy being overcharged by 20%.

As I mentioned earlier, the fake terror scare is replacing the fake terror alert as a method of frightening voters in an election year, hoping they can be herded like cattle into the Republican fold, while at the same time trying to make the Bush counter-terrorism disaster look like it’s actually foiling terrorism. Now there’s a new one. FourWorlds pointed out this article by Larisa Alexandrovna at The Raw Story:

One former intelligence field officer says, and two other CIA officials confirm, that the alleged plot by Muslim extremists to bomb the Holland Tunnel in New York City was nothing more than chatter by unaffiliated individuals with no financing or training in an open forum already monitored extensively by the United States Government, RAW STORY has learned.

“The so-called New York tunnel plot was a result of discussions held on an open Jihadi web site,” said Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and contributor to American Conservative magazine, in a late Friday afternoon conversation. Although Giraldi acknowledges that the persons involved – “three of whom have already been arrested in Lebanon and elsewhere – are indeed extremists,” their online chatter is considerably overblown by allegations of an actual plot.

“They are not professionally trained terrorists, however, and had no resources with which to carry out the operation they discussed,” Giraldi added. “Despite press reports that they had asked Abu Musab Zarqawi for assistance, there is no information to confirm that. It is known that the members discussed the possibility of approaching Zarqawi but none of them knew him or had any access to him.”

Two other intelligence officials with experience in the field on extremist operations concurred–and expressed concern that what could have been an operation to eventually track known extremists (should they eventually make actual contact with funds and training,) seems to have been exposed for political gain.

Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media is not picking up on this story, already a day old. It will probably not make much of it, just like they didn’t make much of the truth that the Florida “terror cell” was just a bunch of jerk-offs doing nothing and going nowhere.

I expect, however, that right-wingers outraged at leaks that could hurt efforts to hunt down terrorists will call out the political opportunists in this case and brand them as traitors, as the political handling of this case may have prevented the discovery of actual terrorists who present a danger to us.

Snark! Yeah, right. That would call for consistency. As if.

Something I cooked up in Photoshop.

This from the New York Times:

President Bush said Friday that the court had tacitly approved his use of the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

“It didn’t say we couldn’t have done — couldn’t have made that decision, see?” Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. “They were silent on whether or not Guantánamo — whether or not we should have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of Guantánamo, the decision I made.”

Mr. Bush’s remarks put a favorable spin on a ruling that has been widely interpreted as a rebuke of the administration’s policies in the war on terror. The court, ruled broadly last week in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that military commissions were unauthorized by statute and violated international law.

The question of whether Mr. Bush had properly used Guantánamo Bay to house detainees was not at issue in the case. At issue was whether the president could unilaterally establish military commissions with rights different from those allowed at a court-martial to try detainees for war crimes.

In other words, Bush is interpreting the meaning of a Supreme Court decision based on what was not specified, reading meaning into it that was not explicitly stated.

So much for strict constructionism.

If the White House press corps had any balls, the next chance they got, they’d ask him if he believed in the principle of strict constructionism, of not reading anything into legal matters that was not explicitly stated; when he replies in the positive, hit him with this.

It’s always fun to see the president of the United States stammer and stutter.

I went to Kasai Rinkai with a friend again; this time I chalked up a new life bird. Actually, I had seen the Cattle Egret (Amasagi • アマサギ) before, but in captivity at a bird clinic in Yacho no Rakuen (Wild Birds’ Paradise). This time they were healthy and in the wild, at Kasai Rinkai, sitting in trees above the lake at the observation center (where the Cormorants are always hanging out).

So chalk up one more life bird. And I owe thanks to a very nice couple who pointed them out to me–I might have missed them otherwise!–the Kawaharas. They spoke English very well, and are great guides for watching–I hope I run into them again. In the meantime, they run a very nice web site in English for Tokyo-area birders. They also gave me their cards, which had a sweet title for them in the upper-left corner: “a birding couple.”

In addition to the Cattle Egrets, we spotted an immature Black-crowned Night Heron, like I did last year:

There was a nice-looking Grey Heron:

A few Little Ringed Plovers:

And a very pretty Black-winged Stilt:

From what others told us, we missed a Yellow Bittern and a nice Kingfisher.

A bit more than a decade ago, I was walking from class to the student union on the SFSU campus when someone handed me a booklet, maybe two inches tall by four inches wide. Curious as to what it was, I took it and checked it out. I still have it today. Not because I think it’s an exceptionally good booklet, but because I think it is an exceptionally bad one. The booklet, in comic form, was titled “Big Daddy?” and featured on its cover a gorilla chomping on a banana. Inside, a fat, balding, elitist liberal professor teaches a class full of brainwashed students about evolution. One student stands up and challenges the teacher, eventually “proving” evolution wrong and converting the students and the teacher to Christianity.

Here are a few pages from the cartoon booklet, as reprinted in 2002 (the illustrations and text are the same; some web-based footnotes have been added):

Notice how almost all the students are ethnic–Black, Asian, Jewish, Hispanic–or are women–and the Christian looks like he could have come straight from the Hitler Youth. The “argument” that the teacher uses to “prove” evolution, as well as other materials attributed to modern science, are little more than creationist straw men. The blond-haired, blue-eyed Christian boy winds up by stating that since gluons are “a made-up dream,” God therefore must be the force holding protons together in the nucleus of atoms, citing Colossians 1:17 as proof. Take that, Darwin!

It seemed obvious to me that this guy is a rather standard creationist drumbeater, and the illustrations in this particular booklet have rather uncomfortable racial overtones. The author is Jack T. Chick, a Baptist evangelical who writes these cartoon “tracts” and other fundie publications for a living. He’s the kind of guy who abhors being so politically correct as to give respect to other religions, and seems to take particular umbrage against Islam and Catholicism (which he accuses of, among other things, grand conspiracies such as starting the Civil War, creating the Ku Klux Klan, inventing Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormonism, Unitarianism, Christian Science, and other religious groups, and assassinating Lincoln).

He also pulls some funny stuff, like disproving Islam by pointing out “scientific errors in the Qur’an,” where he shows up Islam by pointing to a scripture that claimed that the sun set in a “spring of murky water,” and that this came from the Islamic belief that the world was flat. This, of course, is in contrast to little things like Noah putting one pair of each of the million or so species of animals on earth (not counting fish) onto a 450-foot ark, or how Christians believed that the sun revolved around the Earth. Or how about when Mark says that “the stars of heaven shall fall”? In several places in the New Testament, stars are referred to as things that can fall to Earth. And so on.

But enough ragging on this guy; it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. The thing is, this guy is not atypical of creationists. Every once in a while I come across the tract in my belongings and get a good chuckle out of it.

I was having dinner at a yakitori place with my brother a few days ago, and in the far corner, saw that the TV was on. They were showing a story about something new that the Tokyo traffic cops have: onboard radar.

In Tokyo (and probably it’s the same elsewhere in Japan), traffic cops are very specific, highly annoying, and completely ineffectual at what they are supposed to be doing. Ostensibly, they are supposed to be monitoring traffic for safety. In reality, it’s all a show.

First off, traffic cops are almost exclusively on motorcycles. I have rarely seen a police car pull over a vehicle, and it may not even have been for a traffic violation. Instead, the motorcycle cops, on large white bikes (“shirobai”) and wearing powder blue uniforms, take care of traffic tickets.

Second, they are picky about when they serve. They are never–repeat, never–out at night or in precipitation.

Third, they choose their prey with severe prejudice. Motorcycles and scooters are at extreme risk, far beyond the proportions of illegal driving habits. Cars are next in line. If you drive a taxi or a truck, you’re golden–they are rarely, if ever, ticketed, despite commonly illegal and dangerous driving habits.

And fourth, they don’t ticket you for being unsafe anyway. They ticket you, apparently, simply because they can, and they have a seasonal quota to fill. Let me explain more on this last point. Police don’t stop people for being dangerous, just for breaking petty rules. Like making a right turn at a three-lane intersection on a 50cc scooter. If it’s 51cc scooter, or a 2-lane intersection, you’re fine. Making the illegal version of the turn is in no way, shape, or form dangerous. And the practice of not patrolling at night or in the rain–times when driving is at its most dangerous and the most lives would be saved by enforcing the rules–flies in the face of the “safety” mission. The traffic cops must have a great union.

Furthermore, police here don’t monitor traffic at danger points. I know a very dangerous street full of blind corners, where there are no sidewalks, pedestrians crossing all over the place, and cars speeding. To top it off, a big police station is at the end of the street. And the cops never monitor traffic there.

Where do they monitor it? Where it’s easy to catch people. At the biggest intersections–not because accidents happen there, but because it is the easiest place to break a law, and since you’re going slowly, they can stop you more easily. (Yes, a few will speed past, I’ve seen it–and the cops didn’t do anything.) At overpasses and underpasses–again, not for safety, these are usually safe as houses–but because they can hide very easily, and pull you over just as easily.

And speeding, until now, was restricted to long, straight, empty, countryside roads with no intersections, crosswalks, or cross traffic of any kind, where the speed limit is ridiculously low (usually half the actual safe speed), and where you can’t turn off on side roads to evade capture. Shooting fish in a barrel. One guy clocks you, and then down the road, another guy flags you down and sits you at a desk where one of a line of policemen give you your ticket in assembly-line form (usually for driving 40 mph in a 25 mph zone that would be 50 mph if it were in the U.S.).

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But now, it appears, the motorcycle cops have onboard radar, so they can officially clock your speed either while parked or while driving. A machine on their dash calculates the speed and spits out a sticker.

So are the streets of Tokyo safer? No, of course not. The traffic cops still stick to the areas of easy pickings. But there will be one small change: slightly more unpredictability. You see, one more point about traffic cops being for show and not for real is predictability. They always patrol the same intersections; the speed traps are always in the same places; they always are out in the daytime in good weather. If you know where they are and when they are there, you can violate traffic laws with impunity, slowing down only when you get to a hot spot. And you can tell this by the way some people drive in Japan.

So the new onboard radar thing will have an effect… but only where they use it, which I will bet you is only on the stretches of the main roads near big intersections, as always. That’s where they were doing their thing on the TV show I glimpsed at the yakitori place.

This is one of the reasons why the police don’t get much respect in Japan. The low crime rate is not due to their effectiveness, that’s for certain.

This is not helped by the licensing system. When I got my motorcycle license renewed, we all had to take a driving test. The test was extremely non-real-world in nature, and penalized you for very piddling stuff–like resting on one foot instead of the other when you stop (your foot near the gear shift has to not be bearing your weight; I suppose shifting weight while stopped is illegal). I saw guys taking the test who seemed fine to me, and they were failed. Beats me as to why–piddling stuff, it must have been. When I took my test, I did fine–but they docked me points anyway, and declared I would have to go to driving school for x number of hours. When I went, the lessons had zero relationship to the things they faulted me for on the test. They made me drive a simulator which felt completely different from a real bike, and which I drove safely despite them throwing unreal stuff at me, until apparently I hit the end of the run and they had some virtual driver blindside me.

So why was I sent to school? Because pretty much everyone is; the guys who did perfectly well but were flunked had to go back to driving school for a lot more hours than I did. They had to pay very high fees to do so. And that’s where the flavor of corruption comes in: the schools and the driving center have connections. I was directed to go to a specific school. Just like the motorcycle cops get a cut of the traffic tickets they hand out during “safety drives,” money infects the system.

And the punitive stuff if you get tickets is useless as far as safety goes. If you get tickets, then when your license renewal comes up, you have to attend traffic school for most of the day. The school is a video-and-lecture, and doesn’t address the violations the captive audience is there for. If you get enough tickets to rake up 6 points off of your license within a certain time period, then you get suspended for 30 days unless you attend an all-day lecture, and must take a test as well. The questions again are pretty much unrelated to your violation.

In short, it’s all just for show, and has little or nothing to do with safety. As for the tickets and fines, unless you are a safe driver to the point of neurosis, you are bound to get them. I myself see them as a driving tax; you just get them and there’s not much you can do about it.

As someone pointed out, my filters have been aggressive as of late, limiting the number of links allowed. I’ve reset the limit to 3 again; hopefully, attacks have subsided enough that I won’t get deluged…

Fundamentalists claim that a merger between church and state would not result in persecution of religious minorities–in fact, they often make the assertion that not merging church and state is tantamount to persecution of Christians. I’ve even heard people not of fundamentalist stripe say that certain amounts of religion in schools and other public venues is harmless.

If you agree with that to any degree, then read this. I have to admit, I read about this briefly yesterday, but dismissed it as a joke–even I didn’t think things could have gone this far.

Here’s the story: public schools in a district of Delaware have for some time included a certain amount of Christian proselytization. School board meetings, which students were often made to attend, opened with Christian prayer, as did many sports and social events at the school. Christianity was frequently discussed in some classes, to the exclusion of other religions; one teacher told students that Christianity was the “one true religion” and handed out religious pamphlets. Bible clubs were established, promoted, and given prominence; club members were allowed to jump to the head of the lines waiting for lunch. At least one school distributed bibles to students.

A Jewish family in the district indeed felt persecuted. When school religious activities would leave their children isolated, the school suggested that their children attend the Bible Club. The children were singled out by the religious activity and were bullied; the son was often called “Jew boy” by classmates, who also accused him of “killing Christ.” And at the daughter’s graduation, the Christian preacher presiding over the ceremony said a prayer that included the words, “I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus’ name.” Complaints from the family were ignored.

In 2004, the ACLU threatened a lawsuit to stop the prayer and other religious activities in the district. The Jewish family attended a meeting where the ACLU was to speak, but by that time already was so threatened themselves that they had to ask state troopers to escort them to the meeting, which indeed turned very hostile. Hundreds attended the meeting, where the sixth-grader son of the Jewish family was heckled when he took the stage (“take your yarmulke off!”). Christian parents begged the district not to take Jesus away from their children, others read scripture. The ACLU speaker was booed, and one former school board member even suggested that the mother of the family might meet the same end as an atheist who won a Supreme Court case against organized school prayer–who was later murdered and found dismembered. In the days after the meeting, radio callers suggested the family convert or move, and the family was called and harassed, one caller suggesting that the Ku Klux Klan would be involved.

Then, in the new tradition of the right-wing blogosphere, a web site called “Stop the ACLU” published the home address of the Jewish family, in a new practice the site called “Expose the Plaintiffs.” Even aside from the fact that the family was not being represented directly by the ACLU, such a publication of the family’s address sends a clear and unmistakable signal: go get them. Harass them. Make their life hell. And if they should suffer from violence or arson, well, we didn’t promote that–we just published their address on a web site frequented by extremists, that’s all.

The family has since been forced to move, and the web site that published their address say that they are “pleased” they “had an effect in this case.”

So to those who would suggest that religion in public schools is harmless, I would only respond with: “… You were saying?”

Right-wingers go on about the estate tax, calling it “double taxation.” Recently, the White House itself said,

“The death tax results in the double taxation of many family assets….”

Aside from the fact that inheritances don’t always go to family members and the Bush estate tax repeal would not account for this, is the estate tax really “double taxation”?

Of course not. (What, did you think they were right?) Taxes apply whenever money changes hands from one individual to another. If my father were to give me $2 million, the gift tax would kick in after $1 million (presuming my father never gave any other gifts in his lifetime). If he hired me for 20 hours at $100,000 an hour, income and other taxes would apply.

But if he died and left me the same $2 million, I’d be covered by the $2 million exemption on the estate tax, and would pay no taxes on it at all! So, in reality, the estate tax actually is a lower tax. This guy makes the same point. These “double taxation” whiners leave out the fact that this is one person giving money to another by fiat of death, and instead they act like the money, once taxed by the income tax, should not be taxed again.

By this logic–which follows the money and ignores the transfer between individuals–one could say that every tax is “double taxation.” My company earns income and is taxed. The same money is taxed when I get paid. Then the same money gets taxed again when I buy something, in sales tax. Then the company which takes my money must pay taxes on that same money again when they pay their income taxes. And then it’s taxed yet again when they pay their employees… on and on and on. It’s not “double” taxation–it’s infinite taxation! No fair!

On the other hand, expats like me just barely escape real double taxation–because the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world that insists on taxing its citizens abroad. I duck under the exemption by a few ten grand, but a lot of people don’t. They pay full taxes to foreign governments where they live, and then they pay the same taxes to the U.S. government. But Republicans have no problem with that. No, they object to perceived double taxation, not the real kind.

Michelle Malkin now ‘allows’ that there was no threat from the NYT printing the story. But she persists in seeing a threat. Her reasoning: what other possible reason could there have been to run the story? In her words:

Why?

What news value and journalistic end was served by publishing the Cheney/Rumsfeld vacation home piece and the accompanying photo? “Because Rumsfeld gave permission” may cut it with the moonbats and fairweather privocrats. Not with me.

Has this woman never read a newspaper in her life? More likely, she knows that newspapers sometimes print pieces in the Travel section that highlight the homes of famous people. It happens all the time. But Malkin refuses to acknowledge the possibility, instead seeing a ruthless scheme to terrify and intimidate people like Rumsfeld and Cheney:

Leftists scoff at my observation that there is a concerted effort to dig up and publicize the private home information of prominent conservatives in the media and blogosphere to intimidate them.

Well, there is a reason we scoff: she’s an idiot. Look at this page, also in the New York Times. The page is full of articles the Times did on Bill Clinton in his new home in Chappaqua, complete with street names and photos of his house.

So now are we supposed to believe that the New York Times was on a multi-year spree of intimidation against President Clinton? Or is Malkin simply being an idiot? Hmmm….

But here’s the punch line:

Conservative readers have asked me to publish the private home addresses of NYTimes reporters, editors, and photographers.

My response: NO.

I refuse to do it. I strongly urge others not to do it. Your home is your castle. It should be, anyway. There are some legitimate, narrow circumstances under which publicizing a private home address makes sense (the Kelo case, for example, or the counterprotest at Justice David Souter’s New Hampshire home, or documenting the erosion of the California coastline). But “For The Hell Of It” is not one of those reasons, in my book.

Aside from the obvious irony of Malkin saying “NO” with vehemence and then giving not just one but three exceptions, there is the fact that Malkin herself has posted personal information of people she doesn’t like strictly for the purposes of intimidation.

If you will recall a story from a few months ago, a group called Students Against War (SAW) protested at a college military recruitment area. When the students issued a press release with home phone numbers clearly intended for press contact only, Malkin published all the information on her web site, an open invitation for her readers to call and assail these people; no other reason was plausible. She wanted to intimidate people like that, figuring if they were stupid enough to give their home numbers on a press release (as if college students had an office with phone operators), then it was their own damn fault if she published them and they got hammered with threats and harassment. After it was reported that these people were being mercilessly hounded by Malkin’s Moonbats, including many death threats, they asked her to remove the information.

Malkin’s response? She tried to cover her ass by updating her original post to say that she did not condone death threats, and then she reprinted the phone numbers, spurring on yet more harassment. And what reason did she give for doing so? None. Apparently, she did it for the hell of it.

In fact, Malkin played the martyr today by linking to the web sites of extremists on the left who published her home contact information (in response to Malkin releasing the home contact information of the students)–as if that’s the same thing as Malkin and Horowitz doing the same to others on a national platform (and doing it first), or that this somehow excuses her own actions.

Even more bizarre, Malkin herself brings up the SAW incident as if there’s nothing to it on her side of things, and throws a confusing spin on it:

The reactions were predictable: the usual moonbats accused me of hypocrisy by dredging up and lying about the infamous episode with UC Santa Cruz anti-military thugs who retaliated against me for republishing their public contact info by broadcasting my private home address and publishing photos of my neighborhood.

Retaliated? Follow the link she gave with the word “retaliated.” It goes to another of her posts. In that post, there is no evidence of SAW retaliating against her, just a claim. There are several links on that page. None of them lead to any evidence that SAW retaliated against Malkin in any way. Here is SAW’s home page. See if you can find them printing her home contact information. Nothing I can see. Nothing whatsoever to indicate that SAW had any hand in it. Did others post her home information? She does link to that elsewhere, as noted above–but the site linked to has no connection to SAW, except possibly one of sympathy. Not to mention that the people who just as thuggishly posted her home number were in New Jersey, not Santa Cruz. Apparently, people to the left of center all look alike to her.

But she uses this as if to clear herself. So, Malkin is excused for her own thuggery because she was able to find extremists somewhere who did to her what she did to others first? Huh?

But apparently, Malkin sees her own delusion of SAW’s activities as a valid excuse for her own, enough so she can bring up what she did and dismiss it by saying that someone else did the same thing in retaliation.

Certifiable. Add another name to the roster: Limbaugh, Coulter, O’Reilly… Malkin. Thuggishly insane people proudly representing the vanguard of the right wing.

If there are conservatives who have gotten this far, kindly tell me: how do you tolerate slimeballs like that representing your side?

Update: This web site shows that incredibly detailed information on Cheney’s house was available in news stories and on the web last year, including arial and on-the-ground photos (many listed by the realtor), including exact home addresses and much more. What was available on the web for many months now makes the NYT story look positively obfuscatory.

The right wingers appear ready to slam the New York Times on just about anything and everything since it revealed that the administration is (probably illegally) performing warrantless searches on international banking transactions (which, if you’ll recall, Bush himself broadly announced 5 years ago). They have called the reporting “treason” and much worse, and have all but hanged and burned the editor of the NYT in effigy.

Now the right wing media-punditry-blogger troika is out on a massive new campaign (DKos and others are all over this) against the NYT. Why? Because an article in the NYT Travel section published a photo of Rumsfeld’s second home, and wrote on the general neighborhood of Cheney’s in a larger story of the town. Right-wing rag Newsmax called it “retaliation” against the Bush administration for objecting to the NYT story, quoting David Horowitz as saying that there is a war, and that “Democrats, liberals and leftists” are “the enemy.” Michelle “Moonbat” Malkin decried the publishing of the photo, street names, and “maps” of their homes (the “map” showed the location of the town within Maryland, not anyone’s home).

Other right wingers are protesting, claiming that if the NYT were reporting on Jews in Nazi Germany, they would have revealed where Anne Frank was hiding. This blogger, with Horowitz’s blessing and support, urged people to publish the names and addresses of the NYT editors and reporters–which in the right-wing world is an open invitation for violence–with this guy even initially calling for people to publish where their kids go to school (before later cutting the call for info on their kids without note). And it goes on, with great numbers of right-wingers outraged at yet another traitorous breach of security by the Times.

The catch? Rumsfeld gave permission for the photo to be taken, and the locations of these homes have previously been published. In fact, Newsmax itself published the location of Cheney’s home last Fall. So did Fox.

And yet, most of the wingnuts have not published retractions. Those who have acknowledged the new facts about Rumsfeld’s permission are thoroughly unapologetic, like David Horowitz on FrontPageMag, who dismisses the new information with the simple proclamation that we’re at war and people like Rumsfeld and Cheney are at risk. So why did he not call for a jihad against Fox or Newsmax when they published the information?

The partisanship by the right wing now seems to have risen a notch: criticize the Bush administration, and we will declare war against you. You are all traitors, and we will hunt you down. Swell.

Update: via DKos, this story confirms that Rumsfeld himself willingly gave permission for his house to be photographed, contrary to Horowitz’s suggestion that Rumsfeld’s cooperation was extorted. Additionally, the Secret Service itself has confirmed that the story poses no threat whatsoever to Rumsfeld’s or Cheney’s security.