Science marches on

Non Sequitur:

Who let the Dogs out?

Great news -- Huskies earn home field in Vanier Cup:

"'It's something we've dreamt about all year,' Huskies head coach Brian Towriss said after the game, 'but we've stayed focused on one game at a time."

The Vanier Cup is next weekend in Saskatoon.

Great line of the day

August J. Pollak on women who trash feminism:

I always find women like [Ann] Coulter who spew nonsense about the evils of feminism and women's rights to be hilariously precious. Coulter is a childless, never-married lawyer who reached the highest point of her professional career in her 40's as a self-sufficient freelance social commentator. Sixty years ago, there is not a single part of that previous sentence that would be considered even remotely plausible as an aspect of a successful American female. Coulter, and career anti-feminists like her, have only one honest statement deserving of any feminist's time, and that statement is "thank you."

Emphasis mine.

Great line of the day

Matthew Yglesias writes about how the neocons still believe their beautiful war would have gone just great, except that the Iraqis messed it up:

The neoconservative approach to Iraq has always been marked by a remarkable combination of overoptimism about social and political conditions in Iraq with a not-so-well-veiled racist contempt for Arabs. Obviously, however, one of the major elements of Iraqi society that's made reconstructing it into a democracy under our tutelage is that Iraqis have not felt that it would be a good idea to surrender supreme power over their lives to a foreign occupying force led by people who, rather transparently, don't give a damn about them.

Emphasis mine.

Its because she's a woman

Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi is being attacked by the Kewl Kids Washington press corps.
I wish I could revise Wes Clark's "It's because of Iraq" video to say "It's because she's a woman".
I just hope Pelosi knows about the great quotation from the first female mayor of Ottawa, Charlotte Whitten:

"Whatever women do they must do twice as well as men to be thought half as good.
Luckily, this is not difficult."

Leonid Meteor Shower Sunday

The annual Leonid Meteor Shower may be visible in North America just before dawn on Sunday morning.
This photo is from 2001.
It was, I think, in 2002 when I stood out in our backyard peering upwards to watch a meteor shower that was being billed as the shower of the century -- I couldn't see that much because we have too many streetlights around about. But I just wanted to be a part of it.

Do as we say, not as we do

Sleazy:

The Conservative government is proposing to open a loophole in its vaunted accountability act by declaring that party convention fees not be counted as political contributions under the law . . . the Conservative party [is] under investigation by Elections Canada for failing to declare almost $2 million in fees paid by delegates to the party's 2005 convention . . . "The Tories seem to be now admitting that they have broken the law," said Steven MacKinnon, national director of the Liberal party. . . . [NDP Pat Martin] said. "I guess that's the advantage of being the ruling party - you can correct your mistakes by statute after the fact. We won't support it."

Great post of the day

John at Americablog asks a startling and relevant question -- Would UCLA have tasered Rosa Parks?
Here is his complete post, which I copied in full because I'll likely want to quote from it again someday:

After all, Rosa Parks was black, committed a premeditated crime, and loudly and rudely disrupted the commute of a lot of nice white people who simply wanted to get home after a hard day's work. Bitch.
Then there's Ernesto Miranda - another colored guy. Hell, Miranda wasn't even American - he was one of those Mexicans that Lou Dobbs is always talking about. And Miranda was even worse than Parks. Miranda got arrested, and convicted, of kidnapping and rape. Yeah, real nice guy. According to the court, he was a "seriously disturbed individual with pronounced sexual fantasies." Freak.
Or how about Roy Allen Stewart - robber, murderer, sentenced to death. He was an indigent black guy who dropped out of school in the sixth grade. Loser.
The list goes on. Michael Vignera, robber. Charles Townsend, 19-year-old heroin addict and "near mental defective" accused of murder, and found guilty.
So there you have it:
Uppity black chick.
Illegal Mexican.
Poor grade-school drop-out.
Retarded heroin addict.
American heroes? Hardly. None of these people have anything in common with you or me. Some of them asked for it, others had it coming. These aren't the kind of people our laws are meant to protect.
I'm glad the police repeatedly tasered that student at UCLA, while handcuffed and seated and offering no resistance, for simply not having his ID in a university library. That student was an asshole. And in America, civil rights aren't for assholes, or niggers, or spics, or burn-outs. They're only for people like you and me.
PS In case a few of you haven't figured it out, the names above are all of famous US civil rights cases. Each of those nasty individuals is responsible for you having some of your most important rights as American citizens. Think about that. You have YOUR rights because the courts recognized THEIR rights. That's why cases like this, where the victim is an "asshole," matter. Those assholes are responsible for most of the rights you now take for granted.)

Teaching torture

Once the President and the Secretary of Defense have said its OK to torture "bad" people, where do police draw the line? Here's today's story from UCLA in Los Angeles:

. . . Tabatabainejad had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack. When an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, the witnesses said, Tabatabainejad told the officer to let go, yelling "Get off me" several times. "Tabatabainejad encouraged library patrons to join his resistance," police said. "The officers deemed it necessary to use the Taser."
Officers stunned Tabatabainejad, causing him to fall to the floor . . . "It was beyond grotesque," said UCLA graduate David Remesnitsky of Los Angeles, who witnessed the incident. "By the end they took him over the stairs, lifted him up and Tasered him on his rear end. It seemed like it was inappropriately placed. The Tasering was so unnecessary and they just kept doing it."

And there are other incidents in LA also being investigated:

One video showed a Los Angeles Police Department officer dousing a handcuffed suspect in the face with pepper spray as the suspect sat in a patrol car.

Emphasis mine -- the point being that, in both these incidents, the police were in no danger whatsoever but inflicted pain anyway. Digby writes:

. . . police are not supposed to be in the business of meting out punishment nor are they supposed to use excruciating (even if shortlived) pain to make suspects comply with their orders unless they have absolutely no other choice . . . It's the coldest application of pain I've ever seen.

Well, when it comes to "cold", I think the UCLA incident does have some competition:

Afghanistan's growth industry

Well, at least one sector of Afghanistan's economy seems to be improving -- dare I say, even flourishing -- according to the US GAO (h/t Cursor):

Opium Production in Afghanistan, 2002 through 2006:
Net opium poppy cultivation (hectares);
2002: 74,000;
2003: 80,000;
2004: 131,000;
2005: 104,000;
2006: 165,000.
Potential opium production (metric tons);
2002: 3,400;
2003: 3,600;
2004: 4,200;
2005: 4,100;
2006: 6,100.

Do what I say, not what I do

Oh yes, our Steve is Mr. Principle when it comes to human rights in China:

Canada will not "sell-out" its position on human rights to cash in on trade and investment with China, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Wednesday, firmly putting his government's stamp on relations with the Communist economic powerhouse . . . I don't think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values - our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights," Harper said.

But when it comes to Canadian gays and lesbians, Harper will throw their human rights under the bus in the blink of an eye.
When the Conservatives talk about overturning gay marriage, they're actually talking about overturning court decisions and Supreme Court rulings that gay people are deserving of equal rights, including the right to marry. As reported in June, 2005:

. . . if Harper's Tories should get in they would have only one tool to get rid of same-sex marriage most constitutional experts agree: the Charter's notwithstanding clause, a constitutional escape hatch which no federal government has ever used.
``They're going to have to at least be honest with the people,'' said Justice Minister Irwin Cotler. ``They're going to have to acknowledge that they want to override the (Charter of Rights), override constitutional-law decisions in nine jurisdictions in this country, override a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court of Canada, override the rule of law in this country."

I guess China doesn't have a "notwithstanding" clause.
And you know how Canadian business traditionally supports the supposedly pro-business Tories? Well, I wonder what they're thinking now. With the softwood lumber sell-out and the income trusts debacle, and now the China freeze, business people must be starting to wonder whose side Harper is on.

Lee Marvin never had to worry about no stinking city councils

So last night we watched The Big Red One -- Lee Marvin and his merry men fight their way across French Africa, Sicily, Omaha Beach, Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia, virtually single-handedly winning World War II.
And today I read this (h/t Today in Iraq):

As Commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force during the lead-up to the war, Hagee was in charge of planning for the Marines' original push to Baghdad. So I asked him about one of the enduring mysteries of the invasion — why there was no real plan for running the country once Saddam Hussein fell from power.
Unfortunately, Hagee's comments only deepen the mystery. He says he was deeply concerned about who would take charge of major Iraqi cities, like Najaf, as the Marines pushed through them on their way to Baghdad.
Hagee says he asked his boss again and again who would take charge of those cities. He wanted to know what the plan was for Phase IV — military terminology for the phase that follows the end of major combat operations. Phase IV is, in other words, what comes after "mission accomplished." Hagee says that he sent his questions up the chain of command, as they say in the military — and never heard back.

How could they do such a poor job? Well, here's how.
Its because Lee Marvin never had to worry about setting up a civil authority to run Belgium after they mopped up the Nazis. John Wayne didn't rebuild St Mere Eglise, either, after The Longest Day.
Nope, they all gleefully leveled villages without the least concern about who was going to rebuild anything after they left.
And maybe this is why Rumsfeld and Cheney and all were caught flat-footed -- the war movies never bothered showing any of their war heros setting up city council elections.

"I'll bite your legs off"

Read this Glenn Greenwald column about the Iraq war promoters, and see if it doesn't remind you of something:

Once the U.S. invaded Iraq and realized that (a) the WMDs that "justified" the war didn't actually exist and (b) we were completely unprepared to fight the well-armed and well-planned insurgency, we had ample opportunity to adjust, change course, alter our objectives, or leave.
The reason we didn't is because the country was continuously lied to by the most morally depraved people one can fathom, who were so afraid of admitting error regarding the wisdom of the invasion that they kept insisting to Americans that things were going great and that everything would be fixed very soon . . .

Sounds like The Black Knight, doesn't it?
"I cut your arm off!" "No, you didn't!"
"Come on, you pansy!"
"Had enough, eh?"
"Just a flesh wound"
"I've cut your legs off!" "No, you didn't!"
"Call it a draw."
"You yellow bastard, I'll bite your legs off."

. . . it is truly unfathomable that the people who are responsible for this disaster -- not just the ones who advocated it in the beginning, but much worse, the ones who continued to insist that things were going well and that everything was progressing nicely and that reports to the contrary should be dismissed and ignored -- continue to be accorded respect and treated as though they have great credibility. Why is that?
And conversely, why are those who were so right and prescient and wise in their counsel treated as though they are lightweight, laughable morons who can't be "trusted with national security"? Why is it that when one watches news programs, one still encounters all of those smug, all-knowing little sneers whenever there is a reference to Howard Dean or Nancy Pelosi and national security, whereas John McCain and Charles Krauthammer and Robert Kagan and Lawrence Kaplan -- Iraq War lovers all -- are addressed with whispered reverence as we wait for their wise and weighty pronouncements about What We Should Do Next?
It's like watching a patient who has lost limbs and organs due to a surgeon's gross malpractice continue to return to that same surgeon for the next operation, while scoffing at the doctors who warned of the dangers . . .

Bartender Carrie thought of this comparison also.

For a few dollars more

When my daughter was in grade 8, she had to write a report on "buying" a piece of household equipment -- in her case, a stove. She had to compare prices and models, go to several stores to see what was best value, and visit the banks to arrange for a "loan".
Well, when we went to the bank, they told her they didn't lend such small amounts of money, about $500. Instead, they told her that people now used Visa cards for purchases like this.
Well, I wondered, what if you didn't HAVE a Visa card? What if you didn't make enough money to qualify for one? And what if you didn't want to pay 20 per cent interest? Does that mean you're not allowed to buy yourself a stove?
So it was interesting to see that this year's Nobel Peace Prize went to Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, who invented microcredit.
He describes his innovation thusly: "Whatever banks did, I did the opposite." Words to live by.
And now he is leading the second Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax:

Nine years ago, the Microcredit Summit Campaign set a goal to lend money to 100 million of the world's poorest people - those living on less than US$1 a day - by the end of 2005.
Of the 113 million that received loans by the end of last year, only 82 million were considered the world's poorest, but the campaign expects to reach the 100-million goal this year.
Two new goals are the focus of the Halifax summit . . . to reach another 75 million of the world's poorest by 2015, and to ensure the loans help at least 100 million people live on more than a dollar a day.

For too long, our society has just accepted idea that 'the poor will always be with us' and there was nothing individually that anybody could do about poverty except earn enough money ourselves to give some of it away to relief agencies.
Now here is a man who used the skills and knowledge he had to do create something meaningful and directly helpful to millions of people. Its an inspirational example for us all.

. . . Peter MacKay. . . admitted he was awestruck when he first met Yunus before the summit. "You are immediately struck that you're in the presence of greatness," MacKay told a crowd at the summit's opening ceremonies on Sunday. "This man who is so soft-spoken, such an understated giant of a man, has literally changed the world."

Great line of the day

. . . In the middle of an intersection of roads lies a $100 bill. On the corners stand Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Continuing Sectarian Violence [in Iraq], and Something The U.S. Can Do That Will Save Iraq.
Who wins the race to the money? Continuing Sectarian Violence.
Why? Because the other three are figments of your *@%#ing imagination! . . .

From AJ at AMERICAblog. The whole post is a good one.