Here is a website devoted to versions of the Donald Duck family tree.
(H/T Roger Ebert's blog)
"Do not go gentle into that good night. Blog, blog against the dying of the light"
it's as if the government, faced with a depressed and worried people, patted us all on the head and told us to all go out and buy a new hat.
Ode To A Deficit by J. FlahertyAs Saskboy says, anon writes good stuff!
Oh budget, how do I blow thee, let me count the ways.
There was that trifling 10 billion in red I was hiding until summer.
Cost of that war and tanks and planes coming due, oh man, tis such a bummer.
By fate we stumbled on this reprieve, a deficit allowed.
That heap of debts I hid till now are lost among the crowd.
Experts like me, we don't come cheap, on the job all the time.
By the way buddy, with pockets deep, think you could spare a dime?
"I asked Mr. Harper not to play games like that," Ignatieff said during a speech in Toronto.
"I told him to put the facts and figures on the table, not let them slip out at his convenience. But the guy can't help himself. He thinks it is all some kind of game."
"This budget has three simple tests that it must pass," Ignatieff told Liberal MPs and senators at his first caucus meeting since assuming the leadership last month.Sounds like they wouldn't be supporting any kind of Harper magical mystery tour budget.
"Will it protect the most vulnerable? Will it save jobs? And most important of all, will it create the jobs of tomorrow?"
Liberal finance critic Scott Brison said the leader's conditions mean the budget must "avoid a long-term structural deficit with irresponsible tax gimmicks that could prove irreversible once the economy recovers."
I was going to put up "Ding Dong The Witch is Dead" but it seemed inappropriate to this moment of reconciliation. But I hummed it.As did we all.
. . . in the face of an economic storm, our government has been AWOL . . . when I hear talk from the likes of Baird about "quick action" and recognizing the gravity, the proud record of pre-emptive measures, it's worth remembering- 221 days of a Parliament completely AWOL, during the worst economic crisis in at least a generation. . . . where was the Government of Canada during the crucial time? Either on holiday, forcing an election, proroguing Parliament or spending all their energy trying to kill political opponents. That's it, while Rome burned. A disgrace, by any measure.One of the notable observations about the self-pitying Bush speech last night was that Bush thinks he should get a gold star just for showing up.
The Tories will present a beautiful budget (think Stalin's 1936 Constitution), full of beautiful promises and wads of cash, never to be seen or heard from again (until the next election when they will be reannounced).
The thing about torture, you see, even though it's always gone on, is that we used to recognize it as something so bad you never admitted if you did it. You knew that no decent human being would approve. And you knew that it would be bad for us if we went around bragging about torturing people.Yes, it has been.
Just a hint to those planning economic stimulus: a one time payment isn't going to get people to spend. A tax cut isn't going to get people to spend. Not when conditions are like this.H/T Scott. Basically, what we need are more unions.The accelerating job loss — more than one million jobs have disappeared in just two months — suggests that the recession will last at least into early summer, making it the longest since the 1930s. The severe recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s each lasted 16 months, the current record.Good jobs and job security -- that's what will get people to spend.
It is not clear what the next step will be to end the strike.Well, Ottawa, here's an idea -- instead of city leaders and federal politicians indulging in wishful thinking about how the rank and file will solve the problem by breaking their own union, and about how the labour relations board will solve the problem by declaring bus drivers as "essential", why don't they just try negotiating in good faith?
Washington lawyer David Remes, who represents 17 Yemenis, said some of his clients launched the latest hunger strike after Yemeni Salim Hamdan went home in November, a month shy of completion of his 66-month prison sentence.
"They've actually gone ballistic at the fact that Hamdan, who was convicted of supporting terrorism, was released and they, who have been charged with nothing, continue to languish there," said Remes, who met with clients before Christmas . . .
Long-held detainees, most held without charge since early 2002, were "elated" that Hamdan was leaving the prison camps, Remes said.
But, "that doesn't mitigate the perverseness of the situation. If an ordinary detainee knew that all you had to be [was] Osama's servant to get out, a lot of them would have fabricated confessions that they were Osama's servant."
Emphasis mine.Officials have not said whether the officer intended to shoot Grant. One source familiar with the investigation said BART is looking into a number of issues, including whether the officer had meant to fire his Taser stun gun rather than his gun. Alameda County prosecutors are conducting their own investigation, as is standard in officer-involved shootings.I wouldn't be surprised if he did. The police use their stun guns on people who are already on the ground and offering no threat all the time. It's no wonder that one of them would get confused and just start shooting people in the same position. They have no sense of what constitutes a real threat anymore.
See, the problem isn't the form of gun they use, a stun gun or one with bullets. It's that they use any gun on people who are already down.
To some staunch conservatives watching President Bush relinquish the reins of power to President-elect Barack Obama, a few too many ardent liberals are now crashing the gates.Oh, if only it were true. Well, I guess we can always hope.
Some well-known Democratic activists are advising Obama on how to steer federal agencies . . . Conservatives fear that some of these Obama transition advisers are too far left on the political spectrum and are a sign of radical policies to come.
While our system allows a coalition, while a coalition is entirely justified, particularly given the circumstances, if the public largely views it as a power grab, or a deal with separatists, or a refutation of election results, it will never have the necessary moral authority to govern. The basic idea of a party, which just garnered it's lowest public support total in history taking the helm strikes many as somehow unfair, rightly or wrongly. To plow ahead, comforted in the knowledge of justified procedure, without acknowledging whether the public will view the arrangement as "legitimate" is a recipe for disaster.Emphasis mine.
From the beginning the Press has conspired in perpetuating what the sadly departed and sorely missed George Carlin called the American Okee-doke, the pretty lies and comforting half-truths that our corporate overseers use to keep us in line by getting us to accept the illusion that all is well in this great Republic of ours, feeding us, as Carlin says in his last concert for HBO , "just enough bullshit to hold things together." Those lies and half-truths include the following:I suppose the Canadian version might be here.Land of the Free, home of the brave; all men are created equal; Justice is blind; the Press is free; your vote counts; business is honest; the police are on your side; God is watching you; your standard of living will never decline; and everything is going to be just fine."It's all bullshit, folks," says Carlin, almost as his goodbye, "And it's bad for you."
"You have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on it's almost embarrassing to listen to you."Though the thing is, Joe was just parroting what every American pundit still says about how Arafat had turned down a great deal.
I really think the Senate Dems are going to make themselves look ridiculous if they try to avoid seating Burris. Whatever one thinks of Blago, he's still the governor, and he hasn't even been indicted or impeached. If there's no suggestion that this specific appointment is tainted, then I really don't see what the problem is.
All stupid, really.
I realize that it's bizarre that a disgraced governor could legally appoint a senator when he's accused of trying to sell the senate seat in the first place. But I just don't see a good political or legal basis for rejecting him. And neither do many legal beagles who, unlike myself, have the standing to weigh in on such important matters. It appears that my understanding of the law and the constitutional principles involved here are pretty mainstream.