Overstaying your welcome

So Ralph is shocked! SHOCKED! that almost half of his party wants him to leave now.
But after all, Ralph, its been 14 years. Not surprising that people don't want to make it 15 -- party leadership is not an endurance contest.
When you start throwing books at 17-year-old girls, maybe its time to say buh-bye.
There's a little ditty which Paul Martin remembered clearly -- and it would behoove other party leaders to remember as well -- the one that goes like this: "Got along without you before I met you; Gonna get along without you now."

Great line of the day

Steve Gilliard critiques both the Democrat's new security plan and the Republican's old security plan:

. . . there is no plan to actually make an Army which can fight guerrillas, aid and protect NGO's and mobilize quickly. Instead, we're converting artillery and engineers into ad hoc infantry and MP's and sending people out to die in hillbilly armored vehicles.

Can I copyright this idea?

How's this for the newest reality TV show idea -- Wal-Mart endurance contests. Each team would consist of a parent and a teenager, with the parent committed to spending at least one-third of their time in the home and garden departments, while the teenager would be in the electronics and game departments.
I know its no trick, really, to shop at Wal-Mart unnoticed by their staff, but in this game the team that goes the longest without needing to find a staff member to ask for help wins.

On the lighter side

With all the uproar over immigration, I thought everyone might take a break for the joke now circulating around my husband's company:

It is the first day of school and a new East Indian student named Surinder enters the fourth grade. The teacher says: Let's begin by reviewing some American history. Who said "Give me Liberty or give me Death"?
She sees a sea of blank faces, except for Surinder, who has his hand up: Patrick Henry, 1775.
The teacher says: Very good. Who said "Government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth?
Again, no response except from Surinder: Abraham Lincoln, 1863.
The teacher snaps at the rest of the class: Class, you should be ashamed. Surinder knows our history better than you do.
She heards a loud whisper: Fuck the Indians.
Who said that? she demands.
Surinder puts up his hand: General Custer, 1862.
At that point, a student in the back says: I'm gonna puke.
The teacher glares and says: All right! Now who said that?
Surinder immediately says: George H.W. Bush to the Japanese Prime Minister, 1991.
Now furious, another student yells: Oh yeah? Suck this!
Surinder jumps out of his chair waving his hand: Bill Clinton to Monica Lewinsky, 1997.
Now almost at mob hysteria, another student yells: You little shit. If you say anything else, I'll kill you.
Surinder frantically screams: Gary Condit to Chandra Levy, 2001.
The teacher faints. As the class gathers around her on the floor, someone says: Oh shit! We're fucked!
Surinder says quietly: George W. Bush, Iraq, 2006.

"I paid my money to see the high-diving act!"

Our government in action

Our Fearless Leader Stephen Harper is so afraid of exposing the incompetence of his cabinet ministers that he is now holding his Cabinet meetings in secret so reporters cannot buttonhole ministers in the hallway afterward and ask questions.
Well, I guess he knows these guys better than we do.
But as Yosemite Sam said, "I paid my money to see the high diving act! So I'm agonna SEE the high diving act!"

Maybe I thought of this Bugs Bunny Show comparison when I read Canadian Press quoting commenter Coyote at Small Dead Animals "I think that the government should announce to the media any topics of concern to Canadians when they come up."
Now THERE'S democracy in action, isn't it?
All us good little Canadians shouldn't have any topics of concern unless the government announces them first.
So we just won't worry about anything unless our Stevie tells us to.
To their credit, some of the other commenters on the SDA thread weren't taking Stevie's instructions to wear their Winston Smith hats just yet.
And as my son just reminded me -- wasn't this the guy that ran on the platform of accountability and transparency?

Great line of the day

In regard to this CP story Bush extends olive branch to Canada in runup to meeting with Harper , our very own Canadian Cynic riposts "We give them billions of dollars in illegal softwood lumber duties and, in return, we get ... a branch? I'm pretty sure that's not going to cover it."

Slushfund

So the Firearms Centre was already $500 million over budget, so what's another $75,000 anyway. And besides, doing things the right way by actually asking Parliament for the necessary funds "would have taken too much time."
Doing things right -- SUCH a bother, isn't it?

Chris Matthews edges closer to the truth

Bit by bit, the American media is realizing the moral quagmire that is entangling the US in Iraq.
Here is MSNBC's Chris Matthews last week:

. . . There's a difference between chasing terrorists around the world --which we all agree we should do; in fact, the world believes we should be doing -- and going into a country to bring down a government, and then . . . to try to build the government of our liking, a Democratic government where the majority rules. But in this case, the majority simply means one faction overrules the other faction. The faction that's being overruled is fighting the majority faction . . . How do you give the orders to a young American service person, "your job is to make sure that the Shia run the show over there and that the Sunnis buckle under and take their minority role, and that’s your job, to risk your life, maybe lose your life for that purpose" . . . That’s saying we think there should be a certain kind of country here where majority rules, minority takes orders and maybe gets a piece of the action. And if they don’t accept their little minority piece of the action and start to fight the majority, we take the side of the majority and start shooting to kill them. Is that a moral right of America to be doing that?

No, its not, not unless the UN asks you to.
He's getting closer and closer to endorsing Murtha's pullout plan, though he's not quite there yet.
And of course this is why Chretien spoke out against "regime change" before the war, and why he kept us out of Iraq. Thanks, Jean. Canada has had enough of its own moral quagmires over the years, we don't need this one too.

But they wouldn't have been kidnapped in the first place...

This is the cartoon from today's Star Phoenix -- it tries to make some kind of point about how the Christian Peacekeepers want the "bloocthirsty pig dogs of the illegal occupying force" to leave Iraq even though it was the military which rescued them from kidnappers. Ho, ho, ho-- those ungrateful lefties, they're learned their lesson now, blah, blah, blah.
The stupid thing about it is this:
the four Peacemakers would not have been in Iraq, and would not have been kidnapped, if the American military hadn't been there first.

Great line of the day

At Daily Kos, Hunter writes about what the Domenech affair says about the Washington Post:

. . . so long as your paper continues to report facts they don't like . . . those conservatives are still going to attack the paper itself as being hopelessly 'liberal.' Journalism is the liberal part. From Horowitz to Hewitt to Limbaugh, these people hate you. You can't appease them, because there's no such thing as an acceptable 'level' of partisan hackery that will offset actual journalism or inconvenient facts. They'll only be happy when you kill the journalism -- or at least stop reporting the facts surrounding the more inconvenient stories . . . By all means, stand by your decision to balance someone accused of being liberal with a professionally partisan conservative; to balance those with excellent credentials with someone with none; to balance facts with spin; to balance journalism with hackery. It sounds like you've got the glimmer of understanding on just how bad an idea that was, but it doesn't sound like, even now, you understand the basis of the conservative attacks against you. They're playing you for chumps. And you're taking it . . .

Emphasis mine.

Here's the news from Iraq

The US military on the ground is trying very hard to get with the program, but the truth keeps tripping them up. Here's today's AP story quoting Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch:

"There is not widespread violence across Iraq. There is not. Seventy-five percent of the attacks still take place in Baghdad, al-Anbar or Salaheddin (provinces). And in the other 15 provinces, they all averaged less than six attacks a day, and 12 of those provinces averaged less than two attacks a day." . . . The three provinces he cited, however, are home to about 9 million people . . . As Iraqi soldiers and police have begun patrolling more territory, U.S. forces have become less visible in many areas in the country and less easy to target. Also, the nature of the violence in the country has shifted from assaults on American troops to battles rooted in sectarian conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Well over 1,000 people have died violently in Iraq, mainly in and around Baghdad [in the last month] The sectarian-rooted deaths since then have been running at dozens a day. The bodies of hundreds of victims have been dumped after being shot execution-style, hands bound and bearing signs of torture.

Here is the reality. How would we like to be living and working and raising a family in neighbourhoods that looked like these?




A makeshift refugee camp in Baghdad for people displaced by the violence.


Another body found on the street in Baghdad:


A bomb attack at a coffee house:


A car bomb attack in Miqdadiya


A patrol in Basra:


A vegetable market in Hilla, south of Baghdad:


An oil tanker truck set on fire -- the driver blamed the American military, who are probably getting blamed for everything which goes wrong in Iraq these days.


The family allegedly slaughtered by American troops:


And finally, some actual good news: three of the Christian Peacemakers were rescued

The O'Reilly Tactic - "Just Shut Up"

Bush to the media: Just shut up.
With no new "turning points" coming up, the Bush administration is really in trouble with public opinion about Iraq now. The only tactic they have is to revive the Republican talking point from 2004 about how Iraq is just perception, not reality, and its all the media's fault. Its like promoting the idea that if people just don't TALK about poverty, then it doesn't really exist.
Let's be clear here -- the Bush administration doesn't care what is actually happening in Iraq, just what gets reported. They are trying to intimidate reporters and news editors into downplaying the awful daily news from Iraq. It's Bill O'Reilly's "just shut up" line as a White House tactic.
Crooks and Liars quotes CNN commentator Jack Cafferty:

. . . if somebody came into New York City and blew up St. Patrick's Cathedral and in the resulting days they were finding 50 and 60 dead bodies a day on the streets of New York, you suppose the news media would cover it? You're damn right they would. This is nonsense . . . The news isn't good in Iraq. There's violence in Iraq. People are found dead every day in the streets of Baghdad. This didn't turn out the way the politicians told us it would. And it's our fault? I beg to differ.

Saveabureaucrat.com

Another new blog: Saveabureaucrat.com
Another hilarious example of how blogs could change the world.
This story has gone worldwide in the blink of an eye -- an Ottawa bureaucrat has set up a website called "Save a Bureaucrat" to try to raise money so he can quit his job. He writes:

I'm desperate. Desperate to escape my 9 to 5 job I've been at for over 10 years now. It's not that I don't appreciate the steady hours and the decent pay, but it's just that after a while it starts to sap the energy and soul out of you and you realize that you have become a true bureaucrat. . . . But how can I justify quitting my job and giving up my security and pension? The only way I can do it is by obtaining enough money that I can afford to quit and then have enough spare time and energy to do something that makes a difference in my life and the lives of others. Please help me in any small way you can to realize my dreams . . .

So far, he has raised about $50.
The only other place I have seen this type of chutzpa was in the classified ads in Harper's magazine, where people would advertise for money so they could see the world, write poetry, etc -- I always wondered how that worked out for them.

Great line of the day

In The Worm Turns, Digby writes about how the American people and the press are tired of Bush's rhetoric and are more willing to listen to the Dems again:

Listening to George W. Bush's speeches for the last five years, particularly after 9/11, is like having someone sing 'It's a small world after all' over and over and over again. It was bad the first time. Now it makes you want to stab your ears with a letter opener. The press, forced to listen more often than anyone else, seems to have reached its limit as well.

Emphasis mine.

75, 30, 28, 23, 23, 22, 6, 5, 5, 3, 3.

This made me feel sick.
These are the ages of the family members executed last week by American soldiers, according to the Iraqi police report. The report reads

At 230 of 15/3/2006, according to the telegram (report) of the Ishaqi police directorate, American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district. The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including 5 children, 4 women and 2 men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles, and killed their animals...

Here is the AP story describing this massacre. Not quite as bad as MyLai, I guess, but the attitude is the same -- American military so paranoid and out of control that pre-schoolers are the enemy.
James Wolcott describes some of the chaos going on now in Iraq, quoting from Patrick Cockburn on the Iraq death squads and Robert Dreyfuss on the civil war. Then Wolcott has a suggestion for next year's invasion anniversary:

Perhaps next year on the anniversary of this glorious mission, the US could fly a transport plane crammed with the creme de la creme of warbloggers, hawkish pundits, neoconservative thinkers, and cable news and talk radio hosts, and deposit them on the site of Saddam Hussein's fallen statue--the newly christened Krauthammer Square--and let them behold the joy and splendor they have bestowed upon a grateful Iraqi people. Who, in turn, will brave the heat, dust, and danger and leave their homes to demonstrate their gratitude to their noble guests by attempting to shoot their lying asses to pieces.
No, that probably won't make for an appropriate holiday. Scratch that idea.
To earn its rightful date on the calendar, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq should be a day of remembrance on which conscientious Americans wear mourning colors and beg the world's forgiveness, and Iraqis' forgiveness most of all.