Oh yeah...THAT.

I didn't discuss the last debate, in part because it was so utterly bizarre that I found myself at a loss for words.

However, I did find this bit of commentary which I thought was sound it its analysis.
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Wow

That debate was almost painful to watch.

Romney beat Obama like The Hulk beat Loki.

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This Was Just Dumb

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So, What About Those Fishing Boats

The Chinese media is claiming that the fishing fleet that left for the Senkaku Islands mentioned in this post was apocryphal.

Information that a large number of Chinese fishing boats are heading for the Senkaku Islands in Okinawa Prefecture is false, the chief of a Japan Coast Guard office in the southern prefecture said Tuesday.

It seems that a fishing season opened which much like the Alaska season involves a mad dash to sea, that this happened in the middle of the current crisis was run with by the press.

Note that this is a Chinese newspaper and I'm not hearing this anywhere else yet so take with adequate salt.

Indeed, Asahi Shinbun is reporting that the Chinese are keeping several patrol boats and several hundred fishing boats "in the vicinity of" the Senkakus. This means that they are not there now, possibly over the horizon, but could rush the islands at any time.

A senior official of the Japan Coast Guard said the agency was already braced for a more aggressive maritime offensive from China, considering the moves it has recently taken.

"We need to deal with it,” the official said.

The primary duty of fishery monitoring ships is to prevent illegal operations by fishing boats.

But a source close to the Japan Coast Guard said the reality is different. The source said Chinese fishing boats tend to move upon the instructions of a monitoring ship.

"With a single command, fishing boats could head southward (to the Senkakus) all at once,” the source said.

The Japan Coast Guard has assembled 50 patrol boats around the Senkaku Islands in case Chinese government ships or fishing boats enter Japanese territorial waters. Many of the vessels have been sent by regional coast guard headquarters across the country.

So...

If there's a war, the first battle will be fought by the respective countries Coast Guards.

This could turn into a HELL of a real mess real quick.

The JCG is a crackerjack service but coping with hoards of civilians who cannot be harmed but must not be allowed to land while dealing with warships is a thorny problem.

One dead fisherman and China might claim causus belli.

This is a dreadful situation that could spin completely out of control either by an error or a simple boating accident.

As for China's domestic situation, nothing I'm hearing is good.

Ampotan has more.

Then there is this.

The secret of brinkmanship is to stop short of the brink. The danger is that the ground can shift as one stands on the edge. That happened one August 98 years ago and did not work out well for anyone involved.

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Meanwhile...

While the Arab world burns, the China/Japan dispute over the Senkakus is heating up.

Japanese factories in China were shut down yesterday as the anti-Japanese riots escalated. More here and here.

All this is happening as Chinas's prospective leader remains missing.

 There's a lot more here and here over at Ampotan which is covering the situation via the local media.

Their coverage includes this interesting tidbit...


There's a bit more going on than just a territorial dispute, but the mobs anger is a monster not readily put to sleep once awakened.


...and this is possibly the most chilling quote...

"The Mao Zedong era was better, because most people were equal. The methods of the current government are ugly.”

Wow.

If that's a common attitude, then he and others may indeed discover the true meaning of ugly.

Lets pray they don't.

Interesting times indeed.

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Why Norfolk?

  Word is that Mitt Romney is going to announce his veep pic in my home digs of Norfolk VA. This seems odd...

Of course, being politics, the rest of the post is below the fold...

Picture, unusually, is slightly related...

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Bastille Day

Today in history, 7 Aristocrats were freed from a French prison.

The garrison consisted mostly of crippled veterans who wished to continue serving their country and who were sent to the Bastille because it needed guards and the aristocratic prisoners were not considered particularly formidable.
  In the politically charged July of 1790 a leftist revolutionary mob was protesting outside  when they heard one of the prisoners shout from the window that the prisoners were being executed. The prisoner, The Marquis DeSade was lying (as he was wont to do), but this greatly incited the crowd. Two days after he was removed they attacked in an attempt to seize the gunpowder rumored to be there and free the prisoners. They stormed the fortress and were driven off with small arms fire and suffered some casualties. 
   The garrisons commander, was quite inexperienced and, in any event,  had very limited alternatives available. Basically he could surrender or fire his cannon into the faces of a crowd of his fellow Frenchmen. Because his position was not strategically important, the prisoners were just 7 decadent nobles he entered into negotiations with the protestors. 

For his magnanimity he was dragged from the prison and he and  his garrison were butchered.

Regards the 7 prisoners :

Jean Antoine Pujade, Bernard Laroche, Jean Béchade and Jean La Corrège were forgers; they were recaptured and put back in another prison a few days later. Hubert de Solages and Whyte de Malleville were aristocrats imprisoned at the request of their own families; they too were back in jail within a week. Finally, Auguste Tavernier had been accused in 1757 of a connection with an attempt to assassinate Louis XV, and was undoubtedly mad; he was transferred to an asylum.

Umm...yay...


Among those who initially went along with the revolution was the population of the region called Vendee.

Three years after the Bastille fell The Committee of Public Safety decided to impose ruinous taxes and a draft. The Vendeeans protested that this was in violation of the principle of 'Libertie'. They were informed that 'Egalitie' required coercion and thus trumped 'Libertie' ('Fraternitie' was, in actuality it seems, a punctuation mark) The Committee of Public Safety then decided to abolish the church and imprison those who would not renounce God. The good people of Vendee protested...then when their emissaries ended up a foot shorter (from the top) they revolted. 

The Committee of Public Safety had an answer...45,000 troops. They did not fair well and were replaced with a larger force, which did not meet with success until the locals powder and shot became depleted. The leader of the punitive force wrote one of the most appalling requests for clarification of an order ever.

General Turreau inquired about "the fate of the women and children I will encounter in rebel territory", stating that, if it was "necessary to pass them all by sword", he would require a decree.

General Turreau's Infernal Columns marched across the Vendee and when it was all over another general, one General Francois Joseph Westermann penned another letter to the The Committee of Public Safety.

"There is no more Vendée... According to the orders that you gave me, I crushed the children under the feet of the horses, massacred the women who, at least for these, will not give birth to any more brigands. I do not have a prisoner to reproach me. I have exterminated all."

 Westermann had an inflated opinion of his efficiency, estimates of the death toll in the Vendee range between 117,000 and 400,000 out of a population of 800,000.  Given the nature of the perpetrators and victims I suspect that there is a tendency to minimize the death toll. Thus, it's probably a bit to the high end of the median of that estimate...far from everybody. Still, ...he tried....and besides...Westermann's fellow Jacobins spread this utopian joy throughout France and under Napoleon through Europe.
But WAIT There's More!
 The French revolution inspired Mao, Stalin, and many third world thugs with body counts that are by comparison mere rounding errors! So those hippies 222 years ago today REALLY made a difference...and isn't that worth celebrating!?

I won't be.

Libertie, Egalitie, Fraternite
These are incompatible principles.

For Equality to be enforced one must ignore the liberties of those who have that which others desire. Fraternity is loyalty and can't exist if one is asked to turn on those who fall out of favor in the name of equality.

While there are things one can do to enable social mobility enforced equality requires a bunch of unequal overseers to enforce it.

Freedom is not free.
Free men are not equal.
Equal men are not free.

These three things are the real lesson of the conflict that grew out of the fall of the Bastille.

...and yet there are still those who look to it as an inspiration and not a cautionary tale. Those people should inspire considerable concern in the rest of us.

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Well, THAT Sucked!

The live blogings of today's SCOTUS follies are below the fold.

To cleanse the palate, here's something much more pleasant.
 

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Woah

All stop:

I dunno WHAT happened in Ace's comments, but it was bad. Ace seems pretty convinced that it was not Mobeys this time. He's shut down his comments at least temporarily.

He also has a long and thoughtful post on maturity, propriety and becoming that which one opposes.
Read the whole thing.

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Round Up of SILENCE!

Da Tech Guy agrees with me on the Day of Silence.
Miss Atilla is calling it Blogger Freedom Day and is posting.
The Jawas are not being silent.
Mark Steyn is verbally dismembering the judge that jailed Aaron Walker.

Others have decided to protest via silence...more or less.

Stacy McCain was being silent with considerable verbosity. from his safe house...Until he broke around an hour ago.
Bearing Drift is typing in silence.
Michelle Malkin is quietly providing contact info for members of congress who have some sway over these matters...
^{(As I've said before congressional action in the free speech arena is worrying, but in her defense this is in response to an attempt to squelch speech.)}
Finally,  ACE, who suggested this whole thing, quietly stepped out of the quiet place at 3:41 EST.

I hope these people never work on submarines.
Of course, it's possible that I misunderstood and they really meant the OTHER silence.

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National Day of Blogger SILENCE

Let's parse this. Shall we?

A group of left wing thugs is using threats, lawsuits, and frivolous SWAT raids (!?) in an attempt to silence bloggers who expose their antics. 

Fear not! Ace of Spades has a plan.

The plan is to respond to attempts to silence us by...being silent.
...
...
...

That'll learn'em!

I think this is silly.
Besides, I generally blog about fluff, and I only have about 6 readers anyway.

So FOO! on that 'being quiet' crap.

Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day was moderately successful in getting this some coverage, so it seems that a linkaroozy is a better plan.

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Recall Election Chat over at Legal Insurrection

Professor Jacobson  is  was hosting a civil live-chat on the Wisconsin recall election here. UPDATE: It's over.

For those not interested in such matters, here is squid on toast.

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Yet Another One

Kimberlin and company have now threatened  the family of Ali Akbar.
There is more here.

Previous Kimberlin posts here, here, here and here.

Note that I will not be participating in The National Day of Blogger Silence as I think it is a singularly dumb idea. (..and no one would notice if I had another of my many days without content.)

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Some Quick Kimberlin Followup

Previous posts here, here and here.
R.S. McCain has blogged follow-up posts from the super secret blogger safehouse here, here, here, and here.

This sordid little story has gotten even nastier now that the fellow who was threatened has been jailed. Volokh has more on that...it's pretty disturbing.

Popehat has thoughts on a non-partisan approach to dealing with this atrocity.

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Another One

Erick Erickson has just been SWATed.

This stuff matters.

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Why it Matters

Yesterday was BLOG ABOUT BRETT KIMBERLIN DAY! . However, my schedule has not permitted any blogging from here since the last Kimberlin post.
This is of little concern as...well, that is one impressive gaggle of bloggers there!

Nevertheless, I do think it is important to talk a bit about WHY this is a big deal.

First, I....

This really isn't politics...it's domestic terrorism.
Nevertheless, below the fold we go....


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Holy Crepe!

I don't do politics much anymore and out of respect for my readers I usually put it below the fold when I do, but this has jumped the line from politics to something much more worrisome and needs to be out in the open.

I've been busy, but I've caught a little of this creepy story.  However, while I was distracted it's gotten really serious.

Short version. A blogger was getting harassed for telling the truth about a convicted left wing terrorist, who like so many left wing terrorist got off light and is now a darling of the professional Left. There's more on this here, here and here.

Blogger R.S. McCain posted an informative post on this here.

As a result of that post R.S. McCain has now has to flee his home with his family. More here.

His tip Jar is here.

I'm just a Z-list blogger but this is nasty, it is vile and it needs to be shouted to the four winds. I'll be damned if I'm not going to do what I can.

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About that Beating

Nearby Norfolk and our local paper are both in the news today because of a beating that took place two weeks ago.  However, no one was killed and the victims seem to have no permanent physical injuries and have returned to work, indeed, though badly hurt, they left the scene via their car. This ought not to be a national story.

However, it IS a national story and that is because the Virginian Pilot sat on the story for two weeks, despite the fact that the victims were two of their own reporters. The paper broke the story not as news, but rather in an OP-ED yesterday. It is here.

Read the whole thing. 

The fact that the paper did not report the story until the editorial staff could not abide the failure to report and broke it is causing understandable alarm. This is particularly true in the wake of all the examples of media malfeasance revolving around the terrible Zimmerman/ Martin  case.

It should be noted that this is quite different from that wickedness in that it seems that the Virginian Pilot staff aren't actually trying to gin up a race war. However, the size of the mob, and the police observation that such things are unremarkable in downtown Norfolk (which one would not know by reading the 'Pilot )are the sorts of things that a local paper ought to be reporting on. The public needs to know these things both to make informed choices about where to go at night as well as raising awareness of the problem so its on the radar at election time...
...oh wait Norfolk's elections were YESTERDAY.
This is something that ought to have been on the public's radar 2 weeks ago so that the candidates could have proposed solutions. Well, the paper did not wish to offend, so those elections did not deal with this issue.

There is speculation that there was a seedier rationale for this debacle beyond knee-jerk political correctness or a fear of fanning racial flames, namely that the president and publisher of the Virginian Pilot is now Obama's deputy HUD secretary. I heard this bantied about on the local radio this morning as well. IMHO the timeline on this does not quite jive as he was already confirmed by the time of the beating. I suppose there could have been some residual butt covering for the old boss. In any event the incident was not covered.

  The beating was terrible in and of itself and the failure to cover it is worrisome but is also of national interest interest because there are some  indications that it was another "Justice for Trayvon" racial assault. Da Tech Guy has a long post on this aspect of the case but it is in one of his updates that he hits the nail on the head regards the local implications of this.

  One other thing to consider, thugs aren’t only thugs when a person of a different race drives by. If an assault on their own journalists went unreported for two weeks how much less likely is the paper to cover non fatal beatings, robberies or intimidation within the community done by the same people? The paper and the police do the black community no favor by ignoring this stuff.

...and therein lies the rub. What else is not getting reported? What information are city council, the local churches and civic groups who might work to mitigate this denied regularly?

These are not trivial questions for our community or the nation at large, for one can be sure that this does not just happen here.
_{There is a sick irony in the attack itself. 
The victims were returning home from the Attucks Theater, a historic black theater that was a major center of black artistic life during segregation and is now a performing arts center dedicated to cross cultural understanding (mainly through jazz). Additionally, the intersection of Brambleton Avenue and Church Streets where the attack took place is dominated by Norfolk's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. Of all the places to have a race riot....}

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Best...Firewall...Ever

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From Red to Purple to Blue : Those Appalling Poll Numbers are Likely Spot On

Over at Hot Air, they seem genuinely surprised that new polls seem to have Virginia sliding into Obamas camp. The only surprise to me is that it's not already solidly so.

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