Links

The "links" section on this site lists the blogs that I myself enjoy reading or use for reference -- it's the simplest place for me to have all these listed.
You may notice I have shifted things around on the Links bar, created some new categories, and also cleaned up some of the formatting (though I am pretty incompetent about fiddling around with the template tool.)
I have added a few new blogs, too, ones that I have come to enjoy reading - Juan Cole and Blondsense and feminist blogs and and suburtan guerrilla and next hurrah and poor man, as well as a couple of additional Canadian blogs Rigorous Intuition and Sean Incognito. And Penguin Papers is back.
Next, I am thinking about put each section into alphabetical order, so I can find things.
Any suggestions for other blogs I should be reading regularly?
And how about your own blogs? Sometimes when people post comments, I remember to check out and bookmark their home blogs, but sometimes I don't have time and then I forget to go back, so I would appreciate a URL for your own blog, too.

Ain't gonna happen

Schiavo kin remain divided after her death"The Schindlers plan to launch a campaign to change state laws so people with severe brain damage, such as Schiavo's, meet a different fate . . . "
So state legislators are going to pass laws requiring the parents or the spouses or the hospitals or the health insurers or the HMOs to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars, year after year, just so someone's "persistent vegetative state" wife or husband or child can continue to piss brainlessly down a tube until all the relatives die off or disappear and the insurers go bankrupt?
Ain't gonna happen. And it shouldn't happen. It is pagan, not Christian, to revere life at all costs, to worship life.

It's all lies, I tell you, lies!

Daily Kos runs what is, unfortunately, an April Fool story - Tom DeLay Alleged to be Democratic Forgery.
In addition to Tom Delay, the story lists all the other things which true-believer republicans consider to be "media-driven forgeries".
Here's the list -- the Schiavo GOP talking points, Bush's national guard records, Bush's drunk driving records, the torture of Iraqi prisoners, the torture of Guantanamo prisoners, memos that argue for the legality of the torture of those prisoners, extraordinary rendition through countries that torture prisoners, voting irregularities, GOP staff convictions for voting irregularities, the latest North Slope oil spill, any other North Slope oil spills, Republican foreign junkets, openly conservative college professors, CAT scans, teen sex, Christians who do not vote Republican, Harkin Energy, Halliburton, reports that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi civilian casualties, the ongoing Iraqi resistance, the First Amendment, the falling dollar, European protests of American policies, peak oil, Iran-Contra, global warming, glacial melting, the deficit, test failures in the 'Star Wars' missile defense program, the podium decorated like a crucifix at the Republican National Convention, Mary Cheney, Red Lake, the ongoing recession, stem cells, reports of the failure of Texas 'No Child Left Behind' laws, preferential treatment of Saudi nationals after 9/11, Bush's crappy performance in the first debate, Bush's crappy performance in the second debate, Bush's crappy performance in the third debate, Paul O'Neill, the Nobel Prize, Bin Laden at Tora Bora, Clinton-era budget surpluses, Pakistani-based nuclear proliferation, numbers that show Social Security is not in crisis, numbers that show Medicare is in crisis, Ken Lay, Ken Lay's airplane, pollution from coal-fired power plants, the militia movement, 'Got Wood?', warlord-protected opium production in Afghanistan, the historic separation of Church and State, years in which the stock market does not rise at the rate of 6%, anthrax, gay penguins, typewriters that can center text, poor people, dinosaurs, James Guckert, and any memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S."

Goalposts moving again

They're doing it. They're actually doing it. It looks like the US is planning on declaring Victory in Iraq and leaving. The Financial Times reports "A top US general on Wednesday said the Pentagon could begin large withdrawals of troops from Iraq as long as the level of violence in the country remained low until national elections, scheduled for the end of the year . . . "[If] the elections go OK, violence stays down, then we ought to be able to make some recommendations for us to be able to bring our forces home," Lt Gen Smith said at the Pentagon."
I guess the 50 to 60 attacks a day reported by General Casey less than a week ago, is now an 'inoperative' figure.
And note how the goal posts are moving again. Though the article notes that Bush himself has said US forces will remain until Iraq can provide for its own security, the generals quoted in this article aren't saying that at all. Rather, the new measurement of success appears to be only whether attacks on American soldiers are declining.
And I'll bet the daily attacks will decline pretty quickly once the US commanders in Iraq find out about the goalpost move. They'll make sure their troops just stop going on patrols. As soon as those elections are over, then whoosh, they're outta there.
After all, as somebody-or-other once said, no one wants to be the last man to die for a mistake.

The Frightened Man

William Pitt writes at Truthout about George W. Bush, the Frightened Man: "It is not terrorism that motivates George, or patriotism, or even profiteering. It is fear, pure and simple: Fear of the truth, fear of the world, fear of any data that collides with his faith-based bubble-encapsuled worldview, and fear most of all of the people he would represent. You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you. Now we know, and the knowledge is deeply and profoundly disturbing."
I believe this to be true.
As I sat watching the press conference Bush held just before he went to war in Iraq, it gradually dawned on me that I was watching a terrified man -- so scared, he could hardly speak. How horrifying to realize that the President of the United States was a coward who wanted every American to be as afraid as he was -- ". . . we live in a dangerous world. We live in new circumstances in our country. . . . I know [people] remember the tragedy of September the 11th, but I hope they understand the lesson of September the 11th. The lesson is, is that we're vulnerable to attack, wherever it may occur, and we must take threats which gather overseas very seriously . . . "
And that was BEFORE anyone had seen the seven minutes when Bush, confronted with an unprecedented demand for courage, could do nothing but sit frozen with fear.

Gone,

Steve Gilliard's News Blog gets it. Wouldn't it be nice if the Shindler supporters could shut the f**k up for a minute or two, and maybe spare a prayer for Terri Schiavo herself instead of spending every moment consumed with bile and anger?
"One of the wacko priests supporting the Schindlers said the brother and sister were asked to leave so Michael Schaivo could spend the last minutes alone with his dying wife. He said 'his heartless cruelty continued'. What? Heartless what? The Schindlers slandered this man, allowed protesters to haunt his small children, tormented him for eight years and they want to talk about heartless cruelty? They tore into him for years, slandered him and placed his life in danger. There's been plenty of heartless cruelty and it lays at the feet of the Schindler's."

Snarfffrfffrrrrrzzzz

My Blahg points to this priceless Paul Wells column at Macleans.ca Inkless Wells - Deflationary spiral -- I had been meaning to blog something about all the election speculation but it didn't seem to be going anywhere, really, and now Wells explains why to anyone who can stay awake long enough to read it:

I wonder whether anyone, at any of several papers, who ordered the latest snap-election wild-goose-chase baloney story splashed across the top of the front page for most of a week feels at all sheepish.
What is so stunning about the debate over the clause that was inserted into a budget enabling bill that would have enabled the Liberals to enact their bottomless Kyoto vengeance against.......znnnnnssssnszzzzz....
Oops. Nodded off. What I was trying to say is, the amazing thing about the week's game of feint and counter-feint over some Kyoto budget thingie....snarfffrfffrrrrrzzzz....
Dammit.
What I was trying to say was that it was all so stunningly pointless. I mean, jaw-droppingly pointless. Organ-bustingly pointless.
For yet another week, the political and chattering classes colluded in an utterly made-up fantasy narrative. Turns out the Liberals didn't mean to force a showdown. Turns out the Cons didn't mean to threaten one. Turns out this minority government's fifth high-stakes, edge-of-your-seat, ooooooooh-golly-what'll-they-do game of brinksmanship was actually about less than the first four.
And yet we cleared the nation's front pages for an endless, breathless account of every meaningless comma. To save our lives, we won't cover what the government is doing. With a gun to our heads, we wouldn't cover what the government could be doing but isn't. We are too busy spinning ourselves into a pathetic tizzy at every spurious hint of another election - an election that would be as thoroughly about nothing as are the weeks when we don't have an election.
Here's how far the gallery's obsession with fantasy goes: on the weekend, Jean Lapierre, who after all is the actual minister of transport in the federal government of the second-largest nation on the face of God's earth, spent several minutes on TV actually discussing transport policy. Airport tax levels, international competition for air routes, carrier bankruptcies, what have you. For a few minutes, it was as though Canada had a government or something.
But at least one big paper ignored all of that, preferring to latch onto Lapierre's momentary burst of angst over the effect of Gomery on the Liberals' electoral fortunes. Out came the banner hed: Minister Fears Snap Election.....snarrrffffffffflllzzzzzzz......
...Sorry. Where was I? Oh yeah. Over at the Toronto Star, Graham Fraser took it into his head to cover what the government minister was saying about the government's plans for his ministry. Silly Graham. At least one commentator spanked him for "burying the lede."
Because you see, the lede is never what the government is actually doing. It's what the government might conceivably do, or have done to it. The conspiracy of inanity, englobing government, opposition and gallery, continues. No rogue reporter, with his mulish insistence on writing about the government as though Canada had one, will be permitted to spoil the parade.
Sorry, that's a bit of a rant. Oh well. It was a profoundly depressing week.

Ah, the Canadian parliamentary press gallery -- can't live with 'em, could live without 'em.

POGGE asks the question

The US economy is Canada's very own 600 pound gorilla, living right next door, too.
POGGE writes a post about the growing protectionist panic in the US - which will get worse, I would think, as their gas prices triple and their housing bubble bursts because their interest rates rise. In Playing chicken with China POGGE asks: "So where does that leave Canada? If the real goal of those who are pulling the strings in the U.S. is to see the American dollar slide more quickly, pushing our own dollar up in relation to it, we lose a big advantage in our trade with the U.S. If there's serious discussion of using protectionist measures to protect American jobs we could see even more disputes like softwood lumber. And if the Americans gamble and lose or fail to act soon enough -- if financial meltdown occurs -- it only gets worse. This is the economy which John Manley and Tom d'Aquino -- not to mention Paul Martin -- want us to depend on even more than we already do. Is there a Plan B?"

Security OK

Canada is not a superhighway for terrorists, says Interpol boss
I am so glad somebody said this.
Not that any nation can boast these days about how secure its borders are, but I felt many of those anti-Canada news stories after Sept 11 talking about our lousy security were suspect -- usually, they seemed to be quoting just one or two ex-CSIS agents who had either set up their own security firms and were "available" for contracts, or had just published a book and wanted publicity for it.

Great line of the day

From Lily Tomlin, via Bilmon
"No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up."
UPDATE - link fixed

Our Beavis Within

A blog I was reading earlier tonight (can't remember whose) linked to this Poorman post from February -- I just had to share it. Enjoy.

I've got the Things-are-getting-better-in-Iraq-but-the-media-aren't-reporting-it Blues

Once again, things are getting better in Iraq, but the darned media just aren't reporting it.
Really.
Yes, I know -- the first batch of things-are-getting-better-but-the-media-isn't-reporting-it stories were back in July 2003, when Uday and whosis were killed. At that time, there were 10 to 12 attacks a day.
And the next batch came in December, 2003, after Saddam was captured. By then, there were 25 to 30 attacks a day.
And then, last July, once again, after the big turnover and before the Republican convention, we were hearing once again about how things were getting better but the media just wasn't reporting it. I think by that time there were 50 attacks a day.
So now the elections have been held two months ago, and there's STILL no new government. But once again its time for another batch of Things-are-getting-better-but-the-media-aren't-reporting-it stories.
Well, here's the latest from someone actually in the country -- and this is supposed to be good news: "George Casey, the commanding US general of the Multi-National Force in Iraq, told [CNN] that current insurgent assaults were running at between 50 and 60 attacks a day. "They (insurgents) are able to maintain the level of violence between 50 and 60 attacks a day," General Casey said. "The four provinces where the insurgency is still capable is out west, near Fallujah in Anbar province, in the Baghdad area and Saladdin, which is in the centre of the country, around Saddam's home town, and up north, in the Mosul area," he said. " Those four provinces, by the way, contain almost half of Iraq's population and about a third of its land area.
And here's the LA Times story on Sunday describing life as it is lived by soldiers in Iraq: "This is a war without a front but with plenty of rear. Many soldiers spend a year in Iraq without ever leaving their fortified bases. Others may never meet an Iraqi, much less kill one. A soldier may patrol for months without ever seeing the enemy, yet risk death or disfigurement at any moment. Each day in Iraq will end, almost without exception, with an American on patrol losing an arm, a leg, an eye or a life to an earth-shattering detonation of high explosives. That these bombs are embedded in the most prosaic emblems of Iraqi life — a car, a donkey cart, a trash pile, a pothole — only intensifies the dread that attends every journey outside the wire."
But things are better, I tell you. BETTER!

Finally, an invention I could really use

Like Something Out of a Cartoon...
"Can't get out of bed in the morning? Scientists at MIT's Media Lab in the United States have invented an alarm clock called Clocky to make even the doziest sleepers, who repeatedly hit the snooze button, leap out of bed. After the snooze button is pressed, the clock, which is equipped with a set of wheels, rolls off the table to another part of the room. "When the alarm sounds again, simply finding Clocky ought to be strenuous enough to prevent even the doziest owner from going back to sleep," New Scientist magazine said Tuesday."

The Anglicans have turned into wingnuts

The Anglican Church has gone mad, batshit, looney, crackers, around the bend, crazy as a loon, mad as a hatter, not all there, nutty as a fruitcake, a few eggs short of a basket, bunny-hopping nuts . . . oh, you get it.
I think it began when, or perhaps even because, they kicked out the Canadian and American branches just because they accept gay people, an act of stunningly unChristian meanness and ignorance and lack of charity.
Now, the inmates are in charge of the asylum, and they're starting in on divorced people -- Bishop: Prince Charles must atone Prince Charles is supposed to apologize to Camilla Parker Bowles' husband for breaking up his marriage? Oh yeah, like Camilla herself had nothing to do with it, I suppose, and her husband himself was perfect in every way? It was all Charles fault?
And the bishop announces this unsolicited opinion to the media, on Easter Sunday no less. It saddens me to see a venerable and once-respected institution like the Anglican church descend into a kind of tabloid journalism grandstanding, making instant and ignorant judgment calls, showing off its own supposed moral purity by pointing fingures, starting these kind of stupid public battles . . . by turning away from gay people, I think the Anglican Church lost its soul. What we are now seeing are the empty masks hanging from trees, twisting in the wind.

"Calling Franz Kafka, white courtesy phone"

This is incredible but, unfortunately, not unbelievable.MSNBC - Panel ignored evidence on Gitmo detainee

A military tribunal determined last fall that Murat Kurnaz, a German national seized in Pakistan in 2001, was a member of al Qaeda and an enemy combatant whom the government could detain indefinitely at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The three military officers on the panel, whose identities are kept secret, said in papers filed in federal court that they reached their conclusion based largely on classified evidence that was too sensitive to release to the public. In fact, that evidence, recently declassified and obtained by The Washington Post, shows that U.S. military intelligence and German law enforcement authorities had largely concluded there was no information that linked Kurnaz to al Qaeda, any other terrorist organization or terrorist activities. [emphasis mine]
In recently declassified portions of a January ruling, a federal judge criticized the military panel for ignoring the exculpatory information that dominates Kurnaz's file and for relying instead on a brief, unsupported memo filed shortly before Kurnaz's hearing by an unidentified government official. Kurnaz has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since at least January 2002. "The U.S. government has known for almost two years that he's innocent of these charges," said Baher Azmy, Kurnaz's attorney. "That begs a lot of questions about what the purpose of Guantanamo really is. He can't be useful to them. He has no intelligence for them. Why in the world is he still there?" . . . Justice Department lawyers told Azmy last week that the information may have been improperly declassified and should be treated in the foreseeable future as classified.

There will come a time when America will have to apologize to the world for Guantanamo and for what it is doing there, as well as at its other secret prisons. 'I was just following orders' was not an acceptable excuse in 1945 and it won't be in 2005 either.