Rampaging Japanese seniors

There have been a number of stories lately about the criminal proclivities of Japan’s senior citizens.  On the northern island of Hokkaido, arrests of seniors actually outnumbered arrests of teenagers in 2006.  Since then, the number of elder arrests has risen to three for every two bookings of teens.  Nationally, crimes by seniors have risen [...]

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All the Obamas in the house, throw your hands up

Johnson, Buchanan, Ford.  These are Presidential names.  Not so much “Obama.”  Database searches suggest there are less than 20 Obama families in the United States, compared to more than 10,000 Clintons and 60,000 Bushes.  The election has granted this handful of mini-celebrities a new set of privileges:
Nicanor Obama began to realize he might be on [...]

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Ladies and gentlemen, your outgoing President

The New York Post reports on George and Laura’s White House Hanukkah invitations:
“The message reads that the couple “requests the pleasure of your company at a Hanukkah reception,” written beneath an image of a Clydesdale horse hauling a Christmas fir along the snow-dappled drive to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.”
No fuckin way.  They can’t be that stupid.

Yes.  [...]

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Detroit’s PR problem

Justin Fox over at Time offers up a comparison between the failures of Wall Street and Detroit:
“Imagine there was this industry–Industry A–that had been flying high for years. It benefited from major regulatory shifts, and changes in the tax code. Its employees were the highest paid of any industry. Then it landed in a crisis [...]

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The Obama effect

For months we heard rumours that Obama was some kind of closet Panther, hiding his afro pick while plotting revolution.  Starting around 11 PM on November 4, the same people who made these claims suddenly decided he was actually a center-rightist, that his victory reflected America’s inherant conservatism.
Obviously, this put actual black nationalists in a [...]

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Romanian elections when you least expect them (2.0)

Romanian legislative elections take place a week from today.  We’ve dealt with this before, so stop looking so surprised.  Our last post summarized the main parties, candidates, and early polling, so it’s time to turn to the clusterfuck details of what promises to be a messy outcome.
Following the collapse of communism, Romanians elected their MPs [...]

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Daniel Henninger throws crap at the wall

Sometimes you read an opinion piece so incredible, so ludicrous, that you just have to spend the next 10 minutes watching Pac Man in a college library to get your head back on straight.  I’m not talking about Tom Friedman hawking his latest catchphrase, nor some dead-ender propping up an ideology.  I’m talking about monkeys [...]

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Webcasting tragedy

Plain awful, from The Guardian:
“Police in Florida are investigating the death of an American teenager after he appeared to take an overdose and die while broadcasting on video website Justin.tv.”
The 19-year-old left a message on another website in which he described his mental anguish and was encouraged to end his life by a number of [...]

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Charlie and the Baghdad MTA

Three people were killed and 19 injured in a bomb attack Friday morning in Baghdad.  More than 10,000 Shia loyal to Moktada al-Sadr hanged President Bush in effigy to protest the government’s security agreement with the United States.  And the Baghdad Metro was running on schedule.
The invasion of Iraq and resulting anarchy halted all train [...]

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Dan Rather and media bias

Way back when Bush’s approval rating was above freezing, CBS News’ Dan Rather got himself canned in a controversy over the President’s National Guard documents.  In case you somehow missed “Rathergate,” which also involved the firing of producer Mary Mapes, the Wikipedia summary is enough background for the more recent news.  Since being tossed out [...]

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