TheTim comments

McChrystal was just venting, though they should know best at their level that there is zero tolerance for airing dirty laundry about your superiors in public. Like it or not, you need to pay the king his schilling when in senior leadership. As Beavis says....FIRE....FIRE, FIRE, FIRE, FIRE....

Why do some people need to be so hyper dramatic? "Given that most of the golfers there are actually Japanese, this seems pretty harsh. I bet they don't do the same for Japanese courses. More double standards for US installations in Japan" Those "Japanese" golfers should consider themselves lucky to play at the quality and challenging course on Camp Zama for a fraction of the price they would pay at a Japanese commercial course. I'm quite certain this policy was mandated by the local government whom Camp Zama leadership bends over backwards to appease. BTW...There are 2000 local jobs and not 20,000. Sorry, I lived on Camp Zama for 6 years so I felt a burning need to correct this. Camp Zama has a very delicate footprint in the community and is a model of how to have a relationship with the host nation.

I wonder if a comment made by their kid that ruined the family and landed his parents in the slammer could be "Kids Say the Darndest Things" material. Maybe in four years they should submit that to the show. Putting Mayumi in jail also is the worst decision in the history of decisions made by judges. He has alread made an example enough out of the husband.

"mother of a 12-year-old girl was charged Tuesday on suspicion of violation of child welfare laws" Allowing a man almost old enough to be her grandfather have his way with her for cash. hmmm...Violation of child welfare laws, you think? The mmost disturbing thing to me is he has been arrested several times before and it walking free now. Doesn't Japan have a 3 strikes rulle? If not, they need one.

The U.S. cash for clunkers program benefitted Japan tremedously. It's not secret Japaense cars are better than American cars. However, the U.S. auto makers are coming back with a vengence. Don't be surprised to see more American cars overseas as soon as the U.S. Congress pulls their heads out and ratifies the international trade agreemeents that have been stymied.

This is disgusting on so many levels. I hope the drugs were worth it.

Americans don't see it as simply an act of protocol. They see it as a sign of submission. Right or wrong, that's the way it looks. It's particularly significant with Hatoyama's anti U.S. comments and Ozawa's anti-Christian comments made recently. Personally I think it's over the top. The Japanese don't even bow that low anymore for the most part. Lately, it's almost like Obama is just asking for the American people to vote him out of office. And, who gives a crap whether the rest of the world doesn't like Americans. You have noooooo idea how hard it is to be an American. It's not what you see on MTV cribs or in the movies. Most Americans work very hard and deal with lots of adversity that Europe and Japan's citizens don't even have to think about. By the fact that you don't like America without knowing much about it shows how ignorant and bigoted you are.

Put yourself in the shoes of the Okinawans. If the Japanese military was stationed in the U.S. or the U.K. or anywhere else in the world, and they committed even one crime, residents of those countries would be pretty angry. U.S. personnel have been committing crimes like that in Okinawa for 60 years. They're sick of it. All this talk of Japan being babied and protected is ignorant rhetoric. Did you know that the Govt of Japan pays more than half the U.S. military budget in Japan? They build every facilility to include the base housing which usually far exceeds the size and comfort of Japanese homes in the area. If I was a Japanese tax payer and those same individuals were committing heinous crimes in my country, I would be doing everything I could to kick them out.

To assume that a Japanese speaker is not able to discern whether or not someone is speaking Chinese is ludacris. I'm an English speaker and with my minimal exposure to the Chinese language I'm able to determine when someone is speaking Chinese. I'm certain an English speaker can tell the difference between French and German. It's that easy for a Japanese speaker to recognize Chinese. What are they going to do to a Chinese criminal? Put him in a heated Japanese prison cell with hot meals as good or better than he's used to back home and surrounded by many of his countrymen? That's not much of a deterrent.

Come on, doesn't everyone want to run a marathon in mosquito infested slums while it's insanely hot and humid outside? I would not want to be a track athlete in Rio! Of course Chicago is not much better in the summer. The games have never been to South America, and I'm quite certain that's most of the reason that Rio got picked, though it seems a very illogical choice to me. The IOC are obviously as corrupt as the UN.

Ummm, I hate to bust Hatoyama's bubble, but the financial crisis is not a strictly U.S. phenomenom. Apparently he has not picked up a newspaper in the last 2 years because it is referred to as a "Global" financial crisis. And oh yes, his buddies in China are also included. It just so happens that China is very cash rich now because the vast majority of wealth is not shared with it's people. I will admit the emerging consumer economy in China is tempting. However, it is still an inherently unstable business climate. I hope Japan is ready to have it's businessmen thrown in jail for false charges whenver the Chinese government feels like it. Will we see the East Asia version of NAFTA? If so, be prepared for the day when millions of illegal Chinese immigrants are putting Japanese citizens out of work by working in Japanese companies for a fraction of the money. I understand the U.S. has done some things that makes Japan want to distance themselves from us, but I hope Japanese citizens realize being closer to China is not the answer to their stagnant economy. Please don't blame the Japanese incessant money saving that is the real cause of the high debt to GDP ratio on the GLOBAL financial crisis.

There goes my plans on Halloween to "decorate" my bosses house

How can this possibly be considered "news"? Companies have been heavily doing this for at least 3 years. It's amazing how Japan, such a technology juggernaut in certain ways, is so behind with Information Technology.

Hopefully those annoying African guys in Roppongi will 'relocate' also. I don't even go to Roppongi anymore because of those idiots.

Obama is doing NO apologizing until Ahmadinejad , or rather "I'm-a-nut-job", apolgoizes for the hostages. Hopefully naive Obama is starting to get a clue why Bush never gave him the time of day.