Snakes on a Plane

This is priceless.
It's why I love blogs and I love the internet.
There's a Samuel Jackson movie coming out called "Snakes on a Plane" -- which is a pretty great title for a film, isn't it? Euuuu - think about it! Here is the film trailer.
Anyway, there's nothing that someone won't blog about -- here is the Snakes on a Blog website by Hollywood writer Josh Friedman who is trying to promote some tickets to the premiere. He has t-shirts, fake trailers, posters, etc. In his other blog, he describes being asked at one point to work on the script for the movie. Apparently he didn't end up working on it, but this was his reaction to the initial offer: "...ask Agent the name of the project, what it's about, etc. He says: Snakes on a Plane. Holy shit, I'm thinking. It's a title. It's a concept. It's a poster and a logline and whatever else you need it to be. It's perfect. Perfect. It's the Everlasting Gobstopper of movie titles." And he is right.
Not to mention all the other "Snakes on a ...." lines we can think of. Here are some of the parody posters.

What a stupid idea

So someone in the Department of Transport thinks Canada should join in the fun and have our very own no-fly list? Yeah, its worked so well in the States -- mainly to harass peace activists.
What a dumb idea for Canada to consider. These types of things are just bureaucracy run amok, and government gone mad, while making us all afraid of each other.
The only real reason to stop someone from flying is because they are suicide bombers who might blow up the plan -- in which case, screen them out before they can get on the plane, then charge them and put them in jail. Otherwise, lets just leave everyone alone.

The first three weeks of the war with Iran

So what would happen during the first weeks of a war between the US and Iran?
Paul William Roberts provides a scenario in today's Globe & Mail. The essay is behind their subscription wall, so here's the summary of what Roberts says:
The US scenario of an attack on Iran is that their nuclear facilities would be bombed and that Iran will grimace and take its medicine.
The Iran scenario plays out differently - "the one most likely playing to thunderous applause in the corridors of theocratic poser on Qom and Tehran" -- is that Iran has already promised to retaliate and there are nearly 1000 missiles in place that could be fired at targets around the Persian Gulf such as ships, airbases, refineries and oil terminals.
Supertanker traffic through the Gulf would halt for weeks, thus stopping 25 percent of the world's oil supply.
China and Japan would be miffed, and could vent their displeasure by dumping a few billion dollars from their foreign currency reserves to offset dolar-based oil prices by forcing a week dollar even lower.
In Iraq, the resistance would increase their attacks because US planes will be busy over Iran "which may explain why US forces there have been consolidating their bases recently." Iran would have "little compunction" about sending to Iraq "killing machines much more advanced than what they currently provide...thus far they have been cautious not to send anything easily traceable...once the bombs fall, though, the gloves will come off, and we can expect to see in Iraq such weapons as .50-calibre rifles able to punch through body armour, multiple rocket launchers, and newer kinds of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles..."
Iran might blockade the Straights of Hormuz with sea mines and attack boats, and by sinking ships. "Around 40 per cent of the world's crude passes through this two-mile-wide channel, where Iranian forces are already situated, ashore at the head and on heafily fortified islands...in 1999, Iran deployed its new Russian-supplied Kilo-class submarines as part of a plan to block the Straits in times of crisis. The subs were to be used to lay mines and fire advanced torpedoes at ships attemtping to enter or leave the southern Gulf." And nearly all US military supplies to Iraq are shipped through the Persian Gulf. So if the US tried to secure the Straits by a major US amphibious landing, such an effort would need somewhere around 30,000 US troops and would involve weeks of combat.
In conclusion, Roberts speculates,

What would happen though if the invasion stalled and the straits were not reopened swiftly? The emergency oil stocks utterly vital to the economy of the industrial world would begin to run out, along with supplies to some 150,000 US troops stranded in Iraq and Kuwait. It is then not at all far-fetched to contemplate history's most ignoble and empire-quashing retret through the deserts of Iraq and Jordan and into Israel, particularly if thousands of Iranian soldiers pour into Iraq to assist in the attacks on US military camps.
These, then, are the chilling facts that have made Iranians so cocky of late...and it is hard to say why they should not feel so self-assured. It truly is a MAD scenario, son of the Cold War, thus one only a lunatic would contemplate. The risks are too grave, the benefits not at all clear.

Roberts ends the essay by noting that it should be expected that defusing the tense situation with Iran could be done through diplomacy.

This will be wearyingly obvious to most world leaders -- except those in Washington, where it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between arrogance and ignorance.

The "Stick It!" Speech

I haven't been watching much Boston Legal lately, but I'm sure glad I watched this episode and saw James Spader's "Stick It!" speech.
Why is it, though, that a television character is speaking out more for American democracy than the American media is? Oh, well, at least somebody is doing it.

NOW I get it

I couldn't understand what was going on at the Moussaous death penalty trial. But now I do.
First, you need to know that there are still some lawsuits going on between the airlines and the families of the 911 victims killed in the plane crashes.
So I guess the airlines were worried that the Moussaoui trial testimony would affect these lawsuits.
So the airline lawyers allegedly got some help from the Transportation Security Administration lawyer to try to make sure the airplane people testifying at the Moussaoui trial didn't say anything which would jeopardize the airline defense in these lawsuits -- for example, to criticize airline security screenings.
The almighty buck rules!

To kill a mockingbird

The Washington Post has a section-C front page story on Marc Emery today -- High Crimes, or A Tokin' Figure? Emery is quoted as saying:

"I'm interested in whatever would legalize pot fastest. Part of me believes that going to jail will accelerate that process. And part of me believes that if I die in jail it will accelerate it even faster.
"I'm very interested to see what happens to me, because I think I am a person of destiny. I haven't been fearful since the moment I was arrested. I just felt my time has finally come. . . .
"I've already got this grand-scale epic going in my head. I am out to destroy the DEA and defeat them. And they are out to destroy me."

Don't they know that its a sin to kill a mockingbird? This is what Canada would be doing if we let Marc Emery go to jail in the US for the rest of his life.

Great lines of the day

Helen Thomas writes in the March 27 edition of The Nation about the great wimp-out of the press during the buildup to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars:

... I longed for ABC-TV's great Sam Donaldson to back up my questions as he always did, and I did the same for him and other daring reporters. Then I realized that the old pros, reporters whom I had known in the past, many of them around during World War II and later the Vietnam War, reporters who had some historical perspective on government deception and folly, were not around anymore. I honestly believe that if reporters had put the spotlight on the flaws in the Bush Administration's war policies, they could have saved the country the heartache and the losses of American and Iraqi lives. It is past time for reporters to forget the party line, ask the tough questions and let the chips fall where they may.

Emphasis mine.

Censure woes

Shorter New York Times Editorial on the Feingold censure resolution: Feingold shouldn't be promoting censure but instead should be asking for a congressional investigation of the warrentless wiretapping even though the committees which are supposed to do such an investigation have already wimped out and did we mention that all the Democrats look cowardly too?

Accident update

Here's another accident update -- they found another broken bone, this time in the knee area -- a "non-displaced facture of the lateral tibial plateau". No wonder my knee wasn't feeling much better. I'm not sure yet what they are going to do about it -- I see the orthopod on Tuesday. Its already been five weeks since the accident, so I hope they don't want to cast it NOW!
I've gone back to work part-time but I guess its just as well I'm not trying to stagger around Britain -- I wouldn't have got very far, I don't think. But damnit, today was the day we were supposed to be watching the
St. Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin -- our hotel was right on the main parade route. So, my brother is there, hoisting a pint in our honour.
And even though I know how difficult it is to see fractures on x-rays at times, I feel like phoning up the City Hospital Emergency Department and asking them WTF? Should I be taking bets on a pool of how many fracures they missed? Its now up to five -- four breaks in the ribs, one in the tibia ...

Just give him time

The AP story on Bush poll numbers ends with this little factoid fillip :

Bush's ratings are still above historical lows recorded since Gallup started presidential polling after World War Two. The approval ratings for Harry Truman, Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon and the first George Bush, the current president's father, all dropped into the 20s.

Oh, just give him time -- Bush has got three years to go. Maybe it will even fall into the teens before he's through -- it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Sue, why don't we?

Short of cash? Need some bucks? Just damage something you own, then sue yourself for damages!
Finally, an idea out of California that makes some sense -- City employee in California hits his own car - then sues himself:

LODI, Calif. (AP) - When a dump truck backed into Curtis Gokey's car, he decided to sue the city for damages.
Only thing is, he was the one driving the dump truck. That minor detail didn't stop Gokey, a Lodi city employee, from filing a $3,600 US claim for the December accident, even after acknowledging the crash was his fault.
After the city denied that claim because Gokey was, in essence, suing himself, he and his wife decided to file a new claim under her name.
City Attorney Steve Schwabauer said this one also lacks merit because Rhonda Gokey can't sue her own husband.
'You can sue your spouse for divorce, but you can't sue your spouse for negligence,' Schwabauer said. 'They're a married couple under California law. They're one entity. It's damage to community property.'

Great line of the day

AMERICAblog quotes Maryland state senate candidate Jamie Raskin testifying before a Maryland Senate Judicial Proceeding Committee, in response to a question from a republican senator about whether "god's law" requires marriage discrimination against gay people:
"Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You didn't place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."

If there is anything that will turn me against the Afghanistan mission...

... it is this type of thing:



Canada, cut it out -- there are perfectly good reasons to be opposed to the Afghanistan mission, just as there are good reasons to support it.
None of them have anything to do with D-Day or World War II.
This TAB cartoon promotes the idea that anyone who is against the Canadian involvement in Afghanistan is just being political, or cowardly, or unpatriotic -- and that is simply wrong. It also promotes the Bush conceit that Afghanistan and Iraq are comparable to the fight against the Nazis in World War II, inflating Bush into some kind of latter-day Churchill fighting on the beaches. Silly, stupid and dumb.
This cartoon also shows the divisiveness which flows from Harper's ridiculous "we won't cut and run" rhetoric, based on the inaccurate assumption that only cowards would not support this mission.
If the only reason to support this deployment is to score points against the NDP and the Liberals, then our "mission" really is baseless and purposeless at its heart. If the Afghanistan mission ends up being used by Canadian conservative politicians to promote the same kind of mean-spirited us-against-them bullsh*t which is polluting US politics now, then lets get those soldiers out of there immediately.

Demonstrating leadership

Bravo,Mr. Harper. Yes, the trip is a bit of a stunt, but it certainly makes it clear what his priorities are. And though he still wasn't totally clear about exactly what our "important work" is, at least he did talk about the importance of rebuilding Afghanistan. And its impressive that Stephen Harper is putting his own political credibility on the line to support the Afghanistan deployment.
He didn't wear a flightsuit, either, or carry a plastic turkey.

No guts

So is this going to be Harper's pattern -- getting all upset and outraged over perceived "personal" insults like the ethics inquiry, but then saying nothing when something as important as medicare is threatened? Is he just hoping that Klein's "Third Way" will go away all by itself? This story -- Harper avoiding showdown over Alberta's Third Way health plan -- doesn't offer any reassurance that Harper will take a stand, or even try to involve the federal government in a dialogue:

Harper may be hoping opposition within Alberta will convince Klein to drop the most controversial parts of the Third Way, but [Klein spokesperson] Etmanski says there is little opposition. She said the provincial government has received 10,000 letters about stopping the grizzly bear hunt, but only about 400 about the Third Way. 'People are taking time to take a look at it.'
Mike McBane of the Canadian Health Coalition said Harper's election promise to support the Canada health act is looking insincere. 'I think this is a question of looking the other way. It's a wink and a nod to the provinces who want to privatize - Alberta, Quebec and B.C. - that the federal government is not going to stand in their way.'