A horrible tragedy for which the perpetrators have never expressed full remorse:

…Late on Tuesday morning, when Nanking had been in Japanese hands for thirty-six hours, former Tokyo secret police chief Nakajima and his 16th division rolled in to town through the Water Gate in trucks and armored cars. he had been delayed by the capture of some 10,000 prisoners at the last moment. All through night his men has been busy herding the prisoners drove by drove to the edge of the Yangtze. They had worn their fingers to the bone pressing machine-gun triggers. At least 6,000 of the prisoners had died. Now in the flat drear light of the next noon, Nakajima’s men began a systematic search inside Nanking for Chinese soldiers who had run away, taken off their uniforms, and vanished. The orders from Prince Asaka, the Emperor’s uncle, were explicit: kill all captives…

…The 80,000-odd soldiers turned loose in Nanking by Muto, Nakajima and Prince Asaka would have raped, killed, stolen, and burned if left to their own devices. In the event they acted under the guidance of their officers; they worked at being drunk and disorderly; they ran amok, but systematically. Their rape of Nanking began when Nakajima entered the city on December 14; it continued for six weeks; and it was not stopped, despite world-wide protest, until Prince Konoye admitted to Hirohito that there was no longer any hope of unseating Chiang Kai-shek…

…In all, according to figures accepted after two years of hearings by a panel of eminent jurists from many lands, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East which sat in Tokyo from 1946 to 1948, 20,000 women were raped in Nanking and its vicinity and over 200,000 men, a least a quarter of them civilians, were murdered. – David Bergamini, Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy, Volume 1

Kind of puts that atomic bomb thing in to perspective, doesn’t it? As William Manchester once wrote, while time has blurred the jagged edges of Japan’s Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere it should be remember that the Japanese were a savage foe. After 14 years of Japan committing crime after crime and resisting our advance with fanatical determination even after it was clear the war was lost, it is no surprise that America’s leaders in 1945 opted for the atomic bomb.

…she thinks I’m a piano player in a whore house:

…A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 23% of Adults share a favorable opinion of members of Congress. Seventy-two percent (72%) have an unfavorable view of congressmen. These findings include five percent (5%) who have a Very Favorable impression and 45% who have a Very Unfavorable view of the legislators…

That guy you saw slipping in to town with the hat pulled down over his eyes? That was your Representative. If he was a Democrat, he also had on a false mustache.

From CNBC:

U.S. employment fell for a second straight month in July as more temporary census jobs ended while private hiring rose less than expected, pointing to an anemic economic recovery…

Its not even an anemic recovery – it is no recovery, at all. The only reason the unemployment rate held steady at 9.5% is because the BLS says that labor force participation continues to drop. In fact, labor force participation is down to levels last seen in 1983. If we put the 3 million or so people who left back in to the mix, unemployment would be in the 11%+ range (whether or not BLS is fudging the participation rate to keep us officially below double-digit unemployment is an open question and if there is a GOP Congress next year, it should be looked in to).

We’re in a bad way and only a complete change in economic policies will allow us to start climbing out of the hole.

UPDATE: Zero Hedge decided to re-crunch the numbers using the labor force participation rate of 2000 instead of the much reduced rate of 2010. This makes sense – even given that a large number of people have left the labor force since 2000 through retirement or death, the growing population would indicate at least that number of people able and willing to work. The unemployment rate if we use that participation rate? 14.7%.

The change we can believe in:

Social Security will pay out more this year than it gets in payroll taxes, marking the first time since the program will be in the red since it was overhauled in 1983, according to the annual authoritative report released Thursday by the program’s actuary…

We warned about this and President Bush attempted to fix it. Democrats refused and, in fact, did everything they could to demonize the very concept of SS reform. Now, its going broke.

We had a window of opportunity for a few years to reform SS without undue pain – now we’ll shortly be forced to reform it and it will be very painful. We might be forced to benefit cuts and/or tax increases just to keep the current and soon recipients ok while we cast about for some sort of long term reform. This is the wages of first buying a system which was bound to fail, and then playing politics with it.

From Zombie:

Combined, the new 2010 allegations and the original 1974 allegations accuse Shirley and Charles Sherrod of:

• Paying farm workers as little as 67¢ per hour, far below minimum wage for the era.

• Employing underage children to perform hard labor.

• Compelling their employees to work in unsafe conditions, including getting sprayed with pesticides.

• Firing any workers who acted as whistleblowers.

• Forcing employees to work overtime in the fields at night with practically no advance notice.

• Having a capricious payscale under which employees doing the exact same jobs were paid different amounts according to the whims of the managers.

• Being unwilling to address the abuse even after it was raised by union representatives.

• Seriously mismanaging the farm to such an extent that it went bankrupt…

I saw the original article over at Counter Punch (certainly one of the most entertaining hard-left websites around, but never take everything they say at face value), but held off on talking about it. I tried to get the author of the original article to clarify a few things for me (I wanted to know if government money was used, as well as a few other things), but I received no reply. It is a searing indictment of the Sherrods – and this latest update just makes it more so.

It is a sad fact that while liberals often talk a great game of helping the poor they often end up being the most ruthless exploiters of the poor out there. And this is for both political and economic exploitation. Liberals have always had this problem of not being able to take the poor as they are – as people who have their own ideas, dreams, fears and needs. The Sherrods wanted to help – and the people would be helped, no matter how much it hurt, it would seem.

Such is the long, sad tale of liberals who are always trying to create a utopia for others. Shirley Sherrod is more than just a face on a video, it would seem – she’s a hard-left operator who has a trail of troubles running out behind her. The big question now is: just how did she get hired for anything, given her record?

Is Christianity a failure worthy of renunciation, or do some people choose to renounce rather than reform?

Poll: 30% still entirely suckered by Obama.

Does the minimum wage increase unemployment? It would seem so.

What drives the unemployment rate? Lots of things, and Mish covers them well.

IMF: US real estate problems could bring on second wave of the financial crisis. Which is definitely possible. It could also be brought on by sovereign default. Or collapsing Chinese bubbles. Or a liquidity crisis in Europe. I could go on, literally, for a long time with this.

Government subsidies for bloggers? I vote “yes” on that and will provide easy instructions for where to send the $1,456,957,345.56 I think my blogging is worth. But, seriously, should we be talking about subsidizing the MSM?

Money keeps flowing away from mutual funds. But the economy is fine. Obama says so. Biden does, too. And Bernanke, as well. And none of them would have the slightest interest in hoodwinking us about this.

Confident of victory in November? I am.

From Boston.com:

The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday.

Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April, the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website…

But don’t feel down about – Her Majesty, Michelle Obama, is off on another swank vacation with 40 of her closest friends. And that should make all you poor, little people feel better…after all, poor people like to see their betters having a good time, gives them someone to look up to!

Jonah Goldberg takes note of the alleged nostalgia for William F. Buckley among many people – an alleged desire, it is claimed, for a more urbane and reasonable right – and what is wrong with that picture:

…Buckley, Kristol and Neuhaus (and Reagan and Goldwater) understood and appreciated the hurly-burly of American democracy. Buckley famously insisted he’d rather be governed by 2,000 random names in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard. He passionately defended Joseph McCarthy, and he admired J. Bracken Lee, the 1950s Utah governor who makes Sarah Palin look like Sandra Day O’Connor on Ambien. Oh, and he was a Rush Limbaugh dittohead. Kristol was an admirer of the Christian right and a supporter of the populist tax revolts of the 1970s. Neuhaus was a leading champion of the religious revival on the right…

I don’t think that any of us over 40 can conceive of being conservative without the influence of Bill Buckley. Back in 1980, when I first started to take a serious interest in politics, there was Buckley’s National Review and there was Buckley’s Firing Line on PBS, and that was the lion’s share of conservative media. So, Buckley was a hero of mine – the first person I came across who consistently stood against what I increasingly perceived as what is wrong with America.

But he was also of his time. And, I think, towards the end he began to misunderstand just what it was he had helped mid-wife in to American politics. Buckley was the Cold Warrior, anti-New Deal crusader – which was fine in its place, but he never made that leap past the Cold War and in to the real battles which were emerging starting around 1990. The torch, in a real sense, was passed when National Review had a cover picture of Rush Limbaugh as “Leader of the Opposition” – the torch, that is, being passed from a man who was of one time, to a man of a different time. And with different concerns confronting us, it was a necessity.

Starting in the mid-90’s it was no more about destroying liberals in the realm of ideas; Buckley and others had already done that. What was necessary was destroying liberalism in power – and for this, different leaders had to emerge. They did; they carried the ball – and now the next, logical step is being taken. In the TEA Party movement is the uprising of the people against the liberal Super-state which was always and ever the only means of conservative victory. In a very real sense, the anger shown at town halls and the tens of thousands who carry banners at TEA Party events were implicit the moment Bill Buckley wrote that he was going to stand athwart history and shout, “stop” – because you can’t really stop, eventually, something had to be done.

In later years when we write the histories of our times and erect monuments to those who led the way back to liberty, we’ll have to find a suitable monument to William F. Buckley, Jr. – some plinth near Philadelphia’s Independence Hall would be appropriate, I think, for a statue to the man who first re-awakened our fierce desire for liberty. But let us not pretend that things were some how better when he turned the lights on and went to work. They are better, now; and will continue to get better as we fulfill the promise of conservatism.

It seems that our atheist brother, Christopher Hitchens, has cancer. I recall the Pope once opined on Napoleon, “he is not, perhaps, a believer, but a time may come when his faith is restored to him”.

Pretty much expected, but still an outrage:

A federal judge overturned California’s gay-marriage ban Wednesday in a landmark case that could eventually force the U.S. Supreme Court to confront the question of whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to wed.

The ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker touched off a celebration outside the courthouse. Gay couples waved rainbow and American flags and erupted with cheers in the city that has long been a magnet for gays…

This is just liberalism determined to win, regardless. The people pass a law banning gay marriage, a judge invalidates it. The people then pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a judge invalidates it. Now it goes up further in to the courts – where this judges absurd ruling should fall on 9th and 10th amendment grounds.

Bottom line, however, is that now the gay marriage proponents are putting our backs against the wall – we must now fully press for a US constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. I don’t want to do it, but I will not tolerate a judge usurping the right of the people to decide their laws.

UPDATE: The Judge’s conclusion is a monument to liberal idiocy:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite- sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

That is sheer opinion dressed up as a legal ruling – the judge clearly is personally offended that the people of California have dared to recognize that men and women are different and that marriage and family hold a special place in society. The judge here is just mad that gay people can’t have a pretty wedding like straight people do – as if the wedding, itself, is what marriage is all about; or that people get married just for the heck of it and so everyone should be able to have a marriage in any manner they like.

We’ll have to see how this goes through the Courts – the judge may later rule that California has to start issuing marriage licenses right away, but that would be to tread on dangerous ground. Gay marriage in theory and awaiting a SC review is one thing – it actually happening and then people taking their CA licenses to other States demanding “full faith and credit” is quite another. So, the judge may hold fire – but, given his clearly irrational view, he might also be in for a dime, in for a dollar.

UPDATE II: A Conclusion Not Anchored in Reality.

UPDATE III: K-Lo over at NRO:

Actual quote from the ruling today: “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.”

This is a court ruling, not an academic seminar at Berkeley.

This isn’t about equality. This is about recreating our fundamental institutions.

Yep.