Still crazy after all these years

So I guess the Star Phoenix thinks that improving working conditions for rural women in Saskatchewan is too 'strident" and "out of the mainstream".
And I guess the Globe and Mail thinks its more seemly and genteel to worry about museums than to worry about Canadian fiscal policy barriers to working women.
Ah, crazy feminists!
Can't we ever just be satisfied with what we've already got?
The Star Phoenix says that Status of Women Canada "too often has come to represent the more strident of the women's movement rather than the diversity or the mainstream" while the Globe says "there is no rule that existing programs must continue forever" and "Surely Status of Women Canada. . . does not need to exist in perpetuity".
Ouch -- strident AND useless.
No wonder the Harper government cut their funding -- for goodness sake, what did we feminists expect?
Well, lets just take a look-see at the crazy, irrelevant things what SOWC has been doing lately. I looked up their planning document for 2006-07, and here's what the harpies are whining about now:

Although the situation for women and girls has improved, inequality persists over time in several key social and economic areas recently measured:
- In 2001, women made up 52 percent of those graduating with a bachelor's or first professional degree.
- In 2004, women accounted for 47 percent of the employed workforce with increased representation in several professional fields and managerial positions.
- In 2004, women contributed $185 billion through wages and self-employment to Canada's Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
- Women provide two-thirds of the unpaid work time (care of children, sick and elderly) spent in Canada. Women's unpaid work constituted the equivalent of 12.8 million jobs to the economy in 1992 at a value of about one third to one half of the GDP-equalling as much as $374 billion.
- Overall, women continue to have significantly less income than men.
- Women who are immigrants, disabled, a visible minority or Aboriginal are more likely to live in poverty than men.
- Violence and abuse begin early in life for many women and girls, and the effects can last a lifetime.
Almost every indicator shows that Aboriginal women face severe barriers to equality and inclusion. According to recent Government statistics, the life expectancy of Aboriginal women is more than five years shorter than that of Canadian women in general, and they are more likely to live in poverty-36.4 percent as compared with 17.7 percent. Aboriginal women are also more than three times more likely to be assaulted by their spouses than are Canadian women in general, and they are eight times more likely to be killed by their spouses after a separation. Aboriginal women who have status under the Indian Act, and who are between the ages of 25 and 44, are five times more likely to experience a violent death than are other Canadian women in the same age category.

And here are some of those "strident" studies published in 2005 and 2006:

Hidden Actors, Muted Voices: The Employment of Rural Women in Saskatchewan Forestry and Agri-Food Industries (Posted August 24, 2006)
Equality for Women: Beyond the Illusion Final report of the Expert Panel on Accountability Mechanisms for Gender Equality (Posted July 17, 2006)
Farm Women and Canadian Agricultural Policy (Posted July 13, 2006)
Policy Research Fund Publications (1996-2006) - CD ROM(April 2006)
Gender and Trade: A Policy Research Dialogue on Mainstreaming Gender into Trade Policies(March 2006)
Report on Status of Women Canada's On-Line Consultation on Gender Equality(Fall 2005) Human Security and Aboriginal Women in Canada(December 2005)
Polygamy in Canada: Legal and Social Implications for Women and Children - A Collection of Policy Research Reports(November 2005)
Women and Employment: Removing Fiscal Barriers to Women's Labour Force Participation(November 2005)
Aboriginal Women: An Issues Backgrounder(August 2005)
Poverty Issues for Canadian Women(August 2005)
Rural Women's Experiences of Maternity Care: Implications for Policy and Practice(July 2005)
Indian Registration: Unrecognized and Unstated Paternity(June 2005)
Public Policy and the Participation of Rural Nova Scotia Women in the New Economy(May 2005)
Increasing Gender Inputs into Canadian International Trade Policy Positions at the WTO(May 2005)
Policy Research Fund Publications (1996-2006) - CD ROM(April 2006)
Retaining Employment Equity Measures in Trade Agreements(February 2005)
Making Family Child Care Work: Strategies for Improving the Working Conditions of Family Childcare Providers (January 2005)

And by the way, Mr. Globe Editorial Writer, those poor, poor museums which can "rarely obtain operational funding from other sources" can at least raise a few bucks on their own by charging admission.
Maybe Status of Women Canada can raise its own money with one of those "naked calendar" stunts -- yeah, and we'll get Belinda Stronach and Tie Domi to pose for it.
Of course, Belinda may complain that this is sexist, but what does she know? Surely sexism doesn't still really exist anymore in Canada . . .

Great lines of the day

Juan Cole:

Bush told Wolf Blitzer he thought Iraq was a comma . . . But Iraq is very clearly an exclamation point. Now you know why the whole policy has been wrong. Bush has been trying to close off a dependent clause, not realizing he was forcefully making a declarative statement.

I love grammar witticisms. Though as Steve Gilliard notes, in another Great Line, the "comma" remark from Bush was actually Fundie-speak, or, as Steve put it, dog whistle:

When Bush said Iraq was a comma, he was speaking in dog whistle to the fundies. It comes from a saying "Never put a period where God puts a comma". Which means things will get better. Which is, of course, insane.

Emphasis mine.
UPDATE: Ian WeltchWelsh explains dog whistle politics. [Thanks for the correction, POGGE]

Shorter Canadian Press

CP thinks this is a news story:

I can't be bothered to examine the actual merits of any arguments against the Tory spending cuts. Its just so much easier to chortle about Tory payback to the people who didn't vote for them. What other 'news' could Canadians possibly need?

I'll stick with coffee, thanks

What a place to find a drowned bat!
Reminds me of a story --
What's worse than finding a worm in an apple?
Finding half a worm in an apple.

Pointy-Haired Boss

Two weeks after 911, Bush reportedly described his job this way:

"I have to manage the bloodlust of the American people."

Well, I guess he managed this just like he managed everything else -- poorly.

Bad idea

Allowing this rally to be held is stupid. What is the point? To make everybody even angrier? Yeah, that will help cool things down and resolve the dispute, won't it.

Beliefs

If your beliefs have turned you into a sanctimonius, judgmental know-it-all jerk, then maybe you need to change your beliefs.

“It’s time to get serious about denying Planned Parenthood funding for birth control or sex education . . . If we believe life begins at the moment of conception, we have to defend it against [this] chemical attack.” Rev. Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International

Or you could consider simply NOT believing it, couldn't you?

Don't let the door hit you on the way out

Shorter Eddie Goldenberg:

Is there some way I can continue to screw up the Liberal party? Why yes, yes there is.

Pining for the fjords

My husband and I realized the other day, while watching a Monty Python episode from 1969, that we have spent our adult lives using Monty Pyton lines as our commentary on the passing scene -- "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition" and "Steals from the poor and gives to the rich, stupid bitch, dum dum dum, dum dum dum" and "How to defend yourself when being attacked with a banana" and "I didn't come here for an argument. Yes, you did." and "a delightful mint-flavoured burgundy", not to mention "Someday, son, all this will be yours. Wot, the curtains?"
So the line that illustrates the newest report of Osama's demise is "He's pining. Pining for the fjords!"
Glenn Greenwald notes that Osama bin Laden "has died more times than any human being in history" and, surprisingly, it often seems to happen just when things are looking a little dark for the Boy Wonder.
Here is Greenwald's list:

Jan. 19, 2002 "Pakistan's president says he thinks Osama bin Laden is most likely dead because the suspected terrorist has been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease"
July 7, 2002 "FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson said Wednesday he believes Osama bin Laden is dead "
Oct. 16, 2002 "Osama Bin Laden appears to be dead but his colleagues have decided that Al Qaida and its insurgency campaign against the United States will continue, Israeli intelligence sources said". . .
April 30, 2005 "A new Islamist website is reporting that bin Laden is dead"
Oct. 24, 2005 "The Pakistani newspaper 'Ausaf' which is based in the city of Multan in the Punjab Province is reporting that Osama bin Laden died last June in a village near Kandahar in Afghanistan"
Jan. 9, 2006 "according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December."
Sept. 23, 2006 "Saudi intelligence services have determined that terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden died of typhoid in August . . . the report comes from an actual secret document. . . "

Then, of course, Bin Laden pops up with another video or audio tape -- just in time for another American election.
Greenwald writes:

Most of our "counter-terrorism" efforts have been like this -- like a Three Stooges routine. The reality is that we have no idea whether bin Laden is dead . . . stumbling around in the dark, dealing only with baseless, fact-free insinuations, and ignoring him (by necessity) except to grasp desperately for him when some domestic political gain can be squeezed out of him. In the hands of Bush followers, terrorism and Al Qaeda are big toys, things to be tossed around aimlessly for fun and diversion . . .

The "model" for the Middle East

Shattered and bloody, brutal and dangerous -- has Iraq already become a "model" in the Middle East?
When the neocons and Bush prattle on about how the American "mission" must succeed in Iraq because it will serve as a model for the whole Middle East, I don't think this was the kind of model they had in mind.
At Hezbollah's Victory Rally in Lebanon on Friday (which Juan Cole says attracted an "enormous crowd" in south Beirut) Hezbollah leader Hasan Nazrallah also talked about Iraq is a model -- of what happens to a country which is not protected as Lebanon was by Hezbollah.
Nazrallah said:

. . . before speaking about Lebanon, we as Lebanese should see Iraq as a model. Had the war in Lebanon succeeded, the Americans would have applied this model in Lebanon. They wanted to apply this model in Lebanon. In the war, we the Lebanese offered martyrs from the Resistance, the army, the security forces, the civil defence, the Red Cross, the news media, the establishments, the different parties, and all our beloved people. But how many were martyrs? Never mind, were they 1,000 or 1,200 martyrs? In Iraq, some 10,000 to 15,000 people are killed every month in a chaotic war that is administered, financed, and incited by the Americans and the Mosad. The resistance in Lebanon protected Lebanon from civil war. [Cheers]
Some say that the resistance in Lebanon pushes for civil war. Never! Had Israel won, Lebanon would have been pushed to civil war, and you would have heard voices calling for federalism, cantons, and division. The Israeli language would have become current anew.
Iraq is a model, which we must always ponder. Our message to our people in Iraq must always be: Patience, calm, unity, wisdom, communication, avoid sedition, and don't wager on the enemy . . .

Sigh

You know, civil rights is just so important, affecting people's healthcare and living conditions and workplaces and incomes and families and even the likelihood of going to jail.
So I wish civil rights commissions could stick to what is important instead of wasting their time on trivialities like whether city councils should start their meetings with a prayer. Why does anyone care?

Great line of the day

Lance Mannion writes about Reagan v. Bush:

. . . Reagan saved the Party by being, often, successful, and by being truly popular. People liked the guy; they didn't need to be told over and over and over and over and over again that not only did they like him, they had to like him or the bad guys will come and kill us.
Reagan also helped himself and the Party by being able to give up on a project or an idea that wasn't working.
Bush's reaction to being wrong is to throw all his energy into being more wrong.
He's the kind of guy who if you tell him he's driving the wrong way down a one way street steps on the gas.
Party loyalists in the back seat are forced to say, No, no, this isn't a one way street, it's just narrow, or if it is one way it's one way this direction and all those other cars coming right at us are going the wrong way but fortunately George is such a skillful driver that they'll all miss us.
We're winning in Iraq. Torture is good. Up is down, down is up, the lark's on the wing, the snail's on the thorn, Bush is in the White House, and all's right with the world.

Emphasis mine.

Updated the blogroll

Hi, Guys -- I finally updated my blogroll, adding these new links I have collected over the last few months:
Saundrie, Big City Lib, Cursor.Org, Echidne of the Snakes, Lance Mannion, Matthew Yglesias, Needlenose, Sadly, No! , and Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule
Give them a try.
UPDATE: "Saundrie" corrected. Sorry Scotian. I should have posted your blog long ago.
UPDATE: Also added Accidental Deliberations and Suburban Guerrilla

Laugh til you cry

Vancouver's Neil Kitson writes a little ditty, in the persona of the Globe Editorial board, titled Bloody but Unbowed: Canadians in Afghanistan and I was going to just quote the funny parts and the tragic parts, but that turned out to be all of it:

Canadian troops are not in Iraq, although this newspaper has consistently advocated sending them there. As we said at the time of the Coalition intervention in 2003, "much good should flow from it." Subsequent events have proved our position to be entirely wrong. It is now clear that Iraq is in a much more desperate situation than before the invasion, that there were no "weapons of mass destruction," and that the invasion was illegal and without justification. We at the Globe are therefore satisfied, like Col. Cathcart, that our genius for ineptitude has not been blunted.
It is in this light that we wholeheartedly support the Canadian involvement in the Afghan catastrophe. We report that our troops are being killed and injured at quite respectable rates, enough perhaps to get us some credibility in Washington. It is indeed regrettable that some of these casualties have been from American bombing and strafing, but this is still honorable: war is a tough business.
Afghanistan was known to be impoverished and littered with land mines after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989, but of little interest until 9/11, The Cataclysm That Changed the World Forever. Then, when it became clear that the 9/11 hijackers were almost all from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan had to be dealt with promptly and aggressively.
Since the subsequent, successful Afghan intervention in 2001, which even the previous lily-livered Liberal government was able to support, there has been marked improvement and benefit. Afghanistan has a democratically elected government, which is pretty influential out to Kabul's city limits, and opium production is up. Land mines are admittedly still a problem, and as reported by the Guardian (a gutless left-wing newspaper that probably supported Stalin, although Churchill supported Stalin, which is a bit of a problem for us, but nothing we can't work out), the current situation in Afghanistan is "close to anarchy with feuding foreign agencies and unethical private security companies compounding problems caused by local corruption." This "stark warning came from Lieutenant General David Richards, head of NATO's international security force in Afghanistan, who warned that Western forces there were short of equipment and were 'running out of time' if they were going to meet the expectations of the Afghan people."
Luckily, however, Operation Medusa has been a success (although there are a few flaky doubters who lower morale but can be easily ignored), and our Canadian troops will now be bravely engaged, with our UN-sanctioned NATO allies, in destroying the opium crop, and with it a major source of income for impoverished rural Afghans (the drought is taking care of the rest). We applaud this resolution. We are not deterred by the fact that European troops (and their colonial descendants) who have little knowledge of the local language, culture, or customs are once again trying to impose their objectives on a population that resents their presence. Neither are we discouraged by the lack of funding or planning for a realistic economic recovery. On the contrary, we on the Globe editorial board are determined to persevere to our objective: a democratic, stable, peaceful Afghanistan, sympathetic to the West, prosperous, and resistant to the mad mullahs in Iran and Pakistan, even though we have no idea how any of this can be accomplished. We support the Harper government's determination to see Canada's Afghan involvement through to its inevitable and disastrous conclusion.

Death is the cash cow

Harper seemed to say that the Canadian military is better off because our soldiers are dying in Afghanistan:

". . . It's, I think, making them a better military, notwithstanding, or maybe in some way because of, the casualties."

When asked to explain how the military benefits when soldiers die, PMO spokesperson Carolyn Steward Olson explained:

. . . she thought the remarks were clear. The military gets stronger when casualties occur, she said, because it means more money is put into equipment and recruiting.

Thanks for clearing that up, Carolyn.
Death, the cash cow for the Canadian military...