Animal love

Meet Lucky:

Here's a great story for New Year's:

. . . Tuesday morning . . .a pair of passersby spotted the calico cat while crossing a footbridge and called for help. Missoula firefighters arrived minutes later, donned wet suits and launched a rescue boat. Someone had put the animal in a cage, along with a rock weighing about 16 pounds, and tossed it into the Clark Fork River. But instead of landing in the water, it bounced several times on the ice and then became stuck. It's unclear how long the cat had been there. Firefighters took it back to the fire station, dried it off and fed it leftover Christmas turkey and a dish of milk. "It was really skinny, nothing but skin and bones, and had collar marks where a too-small collar had rubbed the fur off its neck. But it was really friendly," firefighter Philip Keating said. Firefighter Josh Macrow decided to keep the cat. After his shift, he took it to a vet and then home to his 12-year-old daughter. "It's the sweetest cat," Macrow said. "It sits on your shoulder when you drive down the road and it curled up with my black Labs this morning." Naming the animal was easy, he said. "We call her Lucky."

And Tommy:

. . . when an officer walked into an apartment Thursday night to answer a 911 call, an orange-and-tan striped cat was lying by a telephone on the living room floor. The cat's owner, Gary Rosheisen, was on the ground near his bed having fallen out of his wheelchair . . . He also wasn't wearing his medical-alert necklace and couldn't reach a cord above his pillow that alerts paramedics that he needs help. Daugherty said police received a 911 call from Rosheisen's apartment, but there was no one on the phone. Police called back to make sure everything was OK, and when no one answered, they decided to check things out. . . . Rosheisen got the cat three years ago to help lower his blood pressure. He tried to train him to call 911, unsure if the training ever stuck. The phone in the living room is always on the floor, and there are 12 small buttons — including a speed dial for 911 right above the button for the speaker phone. "He's my hero," Rosheisen said.

And Mademoiselle Giselle:

who adopted a baby squirrel, Finnegan.

The Horse Sex Story

Thanks to Editor & Publisher for explaining why the Seattle Horse Sex Story was so popular this year. I guess otherwise we just couldn't have figured it out.

Office Assistant -- die, damn you, die!

Oh, if only I had this choice!
I stole this from Canadian Cynic, who also linked to the original article. I don't know if I agree with this author's anti-Word rant, but I do just love this graphic.
I use Word all the time, and I just HATE its automatic formatting -- I have as much of it turned off as I can, but still sometimes the document thinks I'm typing a header or some dammed thing and all of a sudden it bounces into 16 point bold Helvetica.

CTV is reporting that there were leaks

Updating my earlier post, now CTV is reporting that emails about Goodale's announcement were buzzing around the Toronto investment community on the afternoon of the Income Trust announcement. Sounds like this is a lot more than just an "unconscious" leaker. And it sounds like some people made some serious money:

Several people in the investment community told CTV they got the heads up that news was coming that day, and that the information originated from Liberals in Ottawa. Jim Leech, a Vice President who manages the Ontario Teacher's Pension Fund, says he heard definitively that afternoon, from several sources, that the announcement would come after 4 p.m. "I got a bunch of emails (and calls) around 2 p.m. saying for sure that he (Goodale) was making an announcement after the close," said Leech.
Don Drummond, Chief Economist for the TD Bank, says he got the first email sometime around 2 p.m., from a media contact who had heard from "Liberal Party and government sources that he (Goodale) was going to make an announcement at 5 p.m." Drummond's contact did not seem to know exactly the announcement would be, just that it would happen that day. Drummond says he got similar information from a source within his bank, also before 4 p.m. (when the markets close). He believes the original sources of the information were "definitely" not within Goodale's office, but elsewhere in the Liberal government. "I heard it secondhand, but not from Finance," said Drummond. "Liberal strategists were the sources ... from Ottawa. A lot of people seemed to know there was an announcement (coming) and some people seemed to know what it was," he added.
Another fund manager, Sandy McIntyre of Sentry Select Capital Corp, said he was tipped off twice, by phone, by two traders who work for two of Canada's major banks. The first call came before noon that day. McIntyre said the trader who called was told by "an individual well-connected in the Liberal Party" that Goodale would be making his announcement after the close of trading. According to McIntrye, the second trader was also tipped off by a Liberal from Ottawa, who said, "The announcement coming that day would be positive." At 3:04 p.m. that day, McIntyre then sent this email to sales staff, with the subject heading "Goodale": "There is a strong rumour out of Ottawa that Goodale is going to pronounce after the close today re his trust solution. The rumour indicates the results will be benign. Hope my sources are right!" The following day, November 24, McIntyre sent another email -- this time to his contact at the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) -- calling for an investigation.
McIntrye wrote to the OSC: "I feel the events of the past 24 hours should not go unexamined. Starting at yesterday morning persistent rumours began to circulate out of Ottawa that Minister Goodale was going to make an announcement concerning the trust issue. The tone of the rumours was that the news would be positive. By mid-afternoon there was confirmation that he would make a statement at 5 p.m. Heavy buying came into the sector in advance of the statement and substantial windfall profits accrued to those who were in receipt of advance notice that a positive decision had been made. Selective disclosure of this nature is unacceptable in the private sector. Why should the public sector be immune?" McIntyre says the OSC then asked him if he wanted to file a formal complaint, but he declined.
It was that spike in trading activity on November 23, though, that first raised questions about a possible leak from government.
The activity also raised questions about who bought stock that afternoon.
CTV found one of the people who invested heavily that day was the CEO of the company that runs the Toronto Stock Exchange, Richard Nesbitt. The details of Nesbitt's purchases are filed on a public website, sedi.ca, where insiders must register any personal stock purchases. Nesbitt's file shows he purchased six blocks of stock in TSX Group Inc., the company he runs, on November 23. Nesbitt bought a total of $759,242.00 worth of stock in the hours before Goodale's announcement. It was the first time he purchased stock in TSX Group Inc, since becoming CEO in 2004. TSX Group Inc. stock then jumped by more than 10 per cent -- the day after Goodale's announcement -- making Nesbitt a paper profit of close to $100,000.00 in one day. The value of TSX Group Inc. stock has continued to increase since. Al Rosen, a forensic accountant with Rosen and Associates, points out TSX Group Inc. benefitted from Goodale's positive news for investors, because it increased confidence in stock in companies listed on the TSX.
Rosen is troubled by Nesbitt's purchase, especially because Nesbitt also sits on the board of Market Regulation Services Inc., the organization which monitors and regulates trading on the TSX. "The person's (Nesbitt's) position as CEO is troublesome, because in a sense, it (the TSX Group) is a regulatory organization."
CTV asked for an interview with Nesbitt, but he was out of town. The TSX Group Inc. sent a statement, which said, in part: "Mr. Nesbitt had absolutely no advance notice of the announcement made by the Department of Finance on November 23." The statement then went on to explain that Nesbitt bought that day because it was within a one week trading window, given to all TSX Group Inc. employees. "It was his last opportunity to add to his core holding in TSX Group Inc. before the end of the calendar year."

Gee -- just lucky, I guess, that he picked that very afternoon . . .
And if it is true that the leaks came from greedy "Liberal strategists" -- people who pushed Goodale to make the announcement and then tipped off a few dozen of their closest friends and party loyalists -- then they have likely just cost Paul Martin the election.

A strange remark about 'unconscious' leaks

So I'm reading CP's Income Trusts RCMP investigation story and CP quotes Tom Caldwell, chairman of Caldwell Securities Ltd, saying something strange:

"Whenever you're working on a big event and there's a time lag, there's always the possibility of leaks, conscious or unconscious," perhaps through casual chatter by low-level workers. "Remember, this is emanating from Ottawa, so there are people there, maybe working on this, who might not have the wildest idea of the market impact of a misplaced statement - this is just a hypothesis."

Sorry, but EVERYONE who works for the federal Department of Finance knows better than to talk about tax policy announcements. Or should have known better . . .
Enter Rumour, painted full of tongues.

If you work in public service . . .

. . . haven't you wanted to do something like this, just once? Airbus pilot maroons drunken passenger on desert island

"We are selling our souls for dross . . . "

In a remarkable display of what blogs can do now, Daily Kos is publishing the British torture memos today.
These memos were written by the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray. He has written a book describing how the UK and US governments are justifying torture in Uztekistan, which Murray says is not only immoral but also useless. Bloggers in UK, and Daily Kos in the US, are publishing the memos simultaneously today, to stymie attempts by the UK Foreign Office block their release.
Here is some of what Murray wrote in July 2004 -- and no wonder the UK government did not want anyone to read it:

CONFIDENTIAL . . . TO IMMEDIATE FCO . . . SUBJECT: RECEIPT OF INTELLIGENCE OBTAINED UNDER TORTURE . . . I understand that the principal argument deployed [to support use of the information obtained by torture] was that the intelligence material disguises the precise source, ie it does not ordinarily reveal the name of the individual who is tortured. Indeed this is true – the material is marked with a euphemism such as "From detainee debriefing." The argument runs that if the individual is not named, we cannot prove that he was tortured.
I will not attempt to hide my utter contempt for such casuistry, nor my shame that I work in an organisation where colleagues would resort to it to justify torture. I have dealt with hundreds of individual cases of political or religious prisoners in Uzbekistan, and I have met with very few where torture, as defined in the UN convention, was not employed. When my then DHM raised the question with the CIA head of station 15 months ago, he readily acknowledged torture was deployed in obtaining intelligence. I do not think there is any doubt as to the fact . . . On the usefulness of the material obtained, this is irrelevant. Article 2 of the Convention, to which we are a party, could not be plainer: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
Nonetheless, I repeat that this material is useless – we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful. It is designed to give the message the Uzbeks want the West to hear. It exaggerates the role, size, organisation and activity of the IMU and its links with Al Qaida. The aim is to convince the West that the Uzbeks are a vital cog against a common foe, that they should keep the assistance, especially military assistance, coming, and that they should mute the international criticism on human rights and economic reform.
I was taken aback when Matthew Kydd said this stuff was valuable. Sixteen months ago it was difficult to argue with SIS in the area of intelligence assessment. But post Butler we know, not only that they can get it wrong on even the most vital and high profile issues, but that they have a particular yen for highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat. That is precisely what the Uzbeks give them. Furthermore MI6 have no operative within a thousand miles of me and certainly no expertise that can come close to my own in making this assessment.
At the Khuderbegainov trial I met an old man from Andizhan. Two of his children had been tortured in front of him until he signed a confession on the family's links with Bin Laden. Tears were streaming down his face. I have no doubt they had as much connection with Bin Laden as I do. This is the standard of the Uzbek intelligence services . . .

Note in particular Murray's observation that the intelligence services are seeking "highly coloured material which exaggerates the threat". That's not surprising.

If a soldier dies in the forest . . .

Hmmm. If a soldier dies in the forest, does his death matter if nobody knows about it?
Adding up the deaths reported in Today in Iraq it appears that at least 18 US soldiers have been killed by insurgents in Iraq over the last week, since Thursday, Dec. 22.
Did anyone see any US news coverage about these deaths? Well, at least the Irish Sun has reported on eight of them .

Great lines of the year

Canadian Press has published a round-up of the year's best lines. Here are ones I liked:

"I know a lot of you are going through separation anxiety... but there's nothing I can do about getting a Tim Hortons in Kabul," brigade commander Col. Al Howard to troops leaving for Afghanistan.
"A significant shock to the system." Lt.-Col. Dave Anderson, missions chief of staff of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, on their switch to American army rations.
"This is a typical day in a lawless country. It's Dodge City without a sheriff." Former Canadian diplomat Ken Taylor on the hostage-taking of two Canadians in Iraq.
"Guns turn punks into killers." Toronto Mayor David Miller.
"The right to bear handguns is not a Canadian value." Ontario Attorney General Michael Bryant.
"I don't want people to think I am someone who is dangerous who will do something to their children." Karla Homolka on her release from prison.
"Being cloistered with nuns could be a very good option." Anna Campagna, executive director of Centre Generation Emploi in Montreal, on Homolka's job prospects post-prison.
"I don't treat my dog like that. I buried my dog." Daniel Edwards on an elderly woman who lay dead in a wheelchair at the New Orleans convention centre three days after Katrina.
"They play hardball. There's no point in us playing some kind of Nerf ball here." NDP Leader Jack Layton on the debate with the U.S. over softwood lumber.
"Gomery put the scandal back in scandalous." Prof. David Docherty of Wilfrid Laurier University on the Gomery inquiry into federal sponsorships.
"If we do not do something about the BlackBerrys, we will have to develop a spray for them," Liberal Senator John Bryden on the technology that disrupts Parliament's electronics.
"The country they left to us has become a place of infinite possibilities." New Gov. Gen. Michaelle Jean on the Fathers of Confederation.
"Somebody might check your wallet before they check your pulse." Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh on privatized health care.
"Come hell or high water, there's no frigging way I'm going to let one ovary bring the government down." An ailing Independent MP Carolyn Parrish on her efforts to get to a confidence vote in Parliament.
"It's like the thief who cries fire in a crowded restaurant." Stephen Harper on the Liberals criticizing the Tories.
"We have to start thinking that Hannibal Lecter is running the government and they'll do anything they have to do to win." Deputy Tory leader Peter MacKay on the Liberals attempt to hold onto power.
"It was the night of the election of the next loser." Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew on the election of Andre Boisclair as Parti Quebecois leader. "It's maliciousness, it's arrogance, it's smugness." BQ Leader Gilles Duceppe in response to Pettigrew.
"I think I'm ethically entitled to the entitlements which I believe are owing to me." David Dingwall, who resigned as head of the Canadian Mint after a fuss over his expenses, on whether he should get a severance package.
"We are talking the full range of various states of undress, and the more startling thing is we get people right down to starkers." Richard Mahoney, Liberal candidate in Ottawa Centre, on door-to-door campaigning.
"They've been dating for quite a long time; now they've decided to get married." McGill University business professor Robert David on the merger of beer giants Molson and Coors.
"The man's 63. He's going to die in jail. How much sterner could you get?" A pleased Gino Cavallo, who lost retirement money in the WorldCom scandal, on former boss Bernard Ebberss 25-year prison term for leading the largest corporate fraud in U.S. history.
"This has been one massive smear job from A to Z, and it will have a surprise ending." Fallen print baron Conrad Black on accusation he stole more than $80 million US from Hollinger International Inc.
"You know the outcome of an unsuccessful situation. I am talking about a complete splat." Judge James Farley on the never-ending Stelco Inc. restructuring talks.
"These are tough times for General Motors, but we've got to fight like hell to save them from themselves. Not putting in a new product in your best plant is not the greatest strategy to revive North America." CAW president Buzz Hargrove on the news GM planned to shut an award-winning plant in Oshawa, Ont.
"You generally find, in terms of fiscal performance, the laziest, sloppiest governments in the world are the ones that come up with these silly charges." Robert Milton, chairman of Air Canada, on governments that impose fees on airlines.
"He'll keep his clothes on." Charles Coplin, the man the NFL put in charge of the Super Bowl halftime show, on performer Paul McCartney.
"They are about to go over a cliff together on a Zamboni." Former Ontario deputy labour minister Victor Pathe on the NHL lockout.
"I drink a lot - I'm a curler - but I don't do drugs." Ontario curler Joe Frans on testing positive for cocaine at the national men's curling championship.
"Lord thunderin' Jesus, it feels awesome. I tell you I could swim to Italy right now." Curler Russ Howard after his Newfoundland team won a Winter Olympics berth.
"It allows us to feel like were contributing to society other than great tunes and great dancing." Tyler Stewart of the Barenaked Ladies on performing in the Live 8 concert for Africa.
"There's only so much T-A you can do within the confines of an intelligent, issue-driven story." Peter Simpson, producer of The Eleventh Hour, on the cancelled but award-winning CTV series.

Great line of the day

From the Comments for a Daily Kosdiary: "Mr. Bush, you have managed to royally piss off Bob Barr and Burt Bacharach. Do you have any idea how spectacularly shitty you have to be to do that???"
It will be interesting to see what happens when Congress resumes in January -- the senators and congresspeople will have been getting an earful from their home districts about the NSA eavesdropping and the Islamic government in Iraq, along the lines of "What is Bush DOING -- and what are YOU doing to STOP it?" And the usual response of "Nothing to see here, folks. Move along, move along" isn't going to cut it.
UPDATE: Welcome, Sideshow people -- thanks, Avedon Carol, for the link. To see my whole blog, click here.

News and new links

Over on the right you may notice some new and revised links.
For the New Links in this go round, I have added a link to my son's page -- he is running for the Greens this election and making a film about it. The Greens will be releasing their platform early in January, so I will be blogging about it then.
Also in the New Links section is a variety of other sites which I now click on or which I think I will refer to frequently. I moved many of the old "new links" into their appropriate sections, but deleted some that I found I wasn't using.
I consolidated the old "group blogs" into the "blogospheres" section. And I have switched the other sections into alphabetical order, to make it easier to find stuff.

Great lines of the day

From James Wolcott's Headhunters, about how warbloggers are entranced with the idea of cutting off our heads. It reminds me of Wonderland's mad White Queen - "Off with their heads!" -- but Wolcott thinks it represents a secret obsession with death porn:

It's no accident that it is the rightwing bloggers and pundits who have been avid about defending the use of torture against suspected terrorists. Nor is it an accident that many of them pooh-poohed Abu Ghraib, sluffing it off as no more harmless than fraternity hazing. But what their decapitation odes reveal is that what they'd really like to do is permit torture closer to home. Domesticate it. Trivialize it. Completely destigmatize it as a tool of the state.
I don't worry about this being actually implemented, though I worry fractionally more every day. I'm interested in it more as a pathological rash afflicting the more rabid warbloggers. It's a sign of impotence, this lurid fury of theirs. It bugs the hell out of them that those of us who opposed the war have turned out to be right. It thwarts the hell out of them that Ward Churchill still has tenure, that they couldn't convict Sami Al-Arian down in Florida, and that their latest purple-finger festival fizzled out so soon. If postwar Iraq swirls down the drain, they'll be looking for someone to blame, and since they never blame themselves for anything (a bedrock neoconservative trait), they leaves nobody here but us chickens. I dread to think of the imaginary punishments they'll devise for us appeasers, turncoats, and traitors; I'm sure they'll be quite vivid.

Merry Christmas, Katrina survivors!

These news photos and their cutlines show how the survivors of Hurricane Katrina are doing Christmas this year -- with courage and determination and good humour. Admirable people, all:


Gregory Scott stands on his porch amidst his tent and Christmas decorations in New Orleans . . . Other than three weeks he spent on a median on the Orleans Parish border, he says he never left New Orleans or his damaged home since Hurricane Katrina. At left is his friend Myron, no last name given. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)


Kim Newton walks with her dogs Boots and Rocket in front of her FEMA trailer which is decorated for Christmas in front of her home that was heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina in the St. Bernard Parish town of Chalmette, La. just outside New Orleans. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)


Children homeless from Hurricane Katrina cheer as a man dressed as Santa Claus arrives on a fire engine for a toy giveaway at Camp Premier, a tent city for people displaced from the storm in Chalmette, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)


A weathered Santa wearing a toxic mask stands in front of a home destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in Chalmette, La. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Shut up, and watch your poll numbers increase

Here's the Politics Canada poll chart again:


And isn't it interesting -- the lates story is that the Tory campaign is failing to gain traction with voters:

Stephen Harper's policy-heavy election campaign is no better at capturing voters' imaginations than the Liberal effort, according to a new poll that also finds less gloom about the direction of the country than when the election was called . . . Allan Gregg, chairman of The Strategic Counsel, said a strategy of not focusing on criticism of the Liberals may be contributing to the Tories stall. "[The Conservatives] have to get that general protest sentiment back up there," Mr. Gregg said. "The cornerstone of any opposition party is unhappiness with the status quo. It's the oldest cliché in the book, but it's true. Governments defeat themselves."
Mr. Gregg said the Liberals may have found their game simply by fighting back every time the Tories lay out a policy proposal. "They're not doing much on the initiative front, but they're very effective in their counter-punching," he said.
The results appear to run against the grain of some commentators who have criticized the Liberals for running a relatively quiet campaign focused on their record rather than announcing new policy ideas. The Tory campaign has announced almost daily policy prescriptions, while the Liberals have criticized them for being too ideological.

This confirms my own thinking -- which I didn't blog about because I didn't think I could possibly be right -- that Martin was getting better traction NOT making policy announcements than Harper was getting by making them.
The problem for Martin with just about any policy announcement, of course, is that the response would be -- well, why didn't you do this already? Harper is not so constrained -- but, on the other hand, when a political party announces armfuls of goodies day after day after day, eventually people start to wonder whether anyone has added it up and whose money will be paying for it.
And Harper's latest one, the Arctic sovereignty thing, is just stupid -- he's trying to counter Martin's winning anti-Bush strategy with a little flag-waving of his own, but Canadians know we have better things to do with billions of dollars than harass a few US submarines.
Harper's deeper problem, however, is that he simply cannot describe how he could manage a minority government.
Canadians aren't stupid -- we know reality. We know that if the Bloc maintains their vote in Quebec, then they will prevent either the Conservatives or the Liberals from achieving a majority government. We know that to form a government, either Harper or Martin would have to ally with either the NDP or the Bloc. We don't want the Bloc to get any stronger than it already is, so we would prefer that they NOT be the deal-breaker party.
We know that Martin would ally with the NDP. And we're OK with that. But we don't know what Harper would do.
No wonder the poll numbers are dropping -- all those policy announcements, yet he hasn't announced the one thing that Canadians would want to know.

Happy Festivus

Hey, December 23 is Festivus, the holiday billed as "for the rest of us."
We had the traditional red Festivus comfort-food meal tonight -- spagetti and meatballs (though I must admit the menu was accidental because I had forgotten all about it.)
Anyway, the other Festivus events are the traditional Airing of Grievances, which begins with "I have a lot of problems with you people" and carries on with a listing of the ways in which your nearest and dearest have disappointed you this year. Then there are the Feats of Strength, and the gathering around the alumnium festivus pole.
This all started as a Seinfield episode -- and has evolved to the point that there are now a number of companies which actually sell Festivus poles.
Obviously, a holiday whose time has come.

Oh festivus, oh festivus, your day is for the rest of us
Oh festivus, oh festivus, we'll tell you all the worst of us.
We'll wrestle and we'll genuflect
Around your pole and then we'll ...
Oh festivus, oh festivus, your day is really best for us.