I read the news today, oh boy

Playing cowboys in Iraq: Now the Brits are saying their sailors were captured in retaliation for the provacative US raid on the Iran consultate in Kurdistan in January -

The attempt by the US to seize the two high-ranking Iranian security officers openly meeting with Iraqi leaders is somewhat as if Iran had tried to kidnap the heads of the CIA and MI6 while they were on an official visit to a country neighbouring Iran, such as Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Dave has comments on this story, too.

Gonzo journalism: My reaction to this story about how Rudi Gulianai's wife once had a job demonstrating surgical staplers for veterinarians is So What?

The Big Hurt: Here's the Blue Jays commercial that caused all the fuss. Seems a bit of an over-reaction to me.

Deja vu all over again: Glenn Greenwald suspects that ABC's hysterical "scoop" about Iran's nuclear capacity is just a bunch of hogwash -- particularly considering that the whole story is sourced to "sources". I bet I know where one of those sources is hiding.

One minor point about the whole US attorneys scandal: One of the reasons all those US attorneys were fired was that the Bush administration could replace them without congressional hearings, because of a provision slipped into the 2001 Patriot Act which nobody knew about because no one had ever actually read the Act. So what I wonder is this -- has anyone read the Patriot Act NOW? And what other unnecessary, authoritatian outrages were also slipped into it at midnight by the Bush administration? I'm sure there is more -- with these guys, there's always more.

Great line of the day

Atrios writes about "those who think political power and discourse should be in the hands of elites, and those who think otherwise:"

There's a large amount of paternalistic elitism which runs through many, the belief that governance is too important for the orthodontists and the rest of the rabble to have much to do with it and that essentially Democracy is a nice fantasy we should maintain without embracing the reality.
It's an argument which would have more merit if the elites in our discourse hadn't gotten basically everything wrong over the past decade.

Yeah, that's for sure. Emphasis mine.

1.2 million have viewed "otters holding hands"

Failing the test

Glenn Greenwald quotes Andrew Sullivan quoting Winston Churchill:

...the great principle of habeas corpus and trial by jury, which are the supreme protection invented by the British people for ordinary individuals against the state. The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him judgement by his peers for an indefinite period, is in the highest degree odious, and is the foundation of all totalitarian governments ... Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy. This is really the test of civilisation.

Emphasis mine.
On this test, the Republican presidential candidates fail.
Romney:

Crane [Cato Institute President Ed Crane] asked if Romney believed the president should have the authority to arrest U.S. citizens with no review. Romney said he would want to hear the pros and cons from smart lawyers before he made up his mind.

Guiliani:

Crane said that he had asked Giuliani the same question a few weeks ago. The mayor said that he would want to use this authority infrequently.

Well, that's magnanimous, isn't it? As Sullivan writes:

America is now failing that test. And the Republican party has lost not only its own soul; it is busy mortgaging the soul of America and the West as a whole. On this, there can be no compromise. Until a leading Republican commits to the full restoration of habeas corpus for American citizens, whether the executive considers them an "enemy combatant" or not, no one who loves freedom can support the GOP. In fact, any lover of freedom should consider it a duty to defeat them.

My son wanted me to watch a documentary on Guantanamo the other night but I couldn't watch it -- I said to him that I find it so sad and deeply upsetting, what has happened to America, what America has done to itself, that sometimes I can hardly bear it.

Hmmmm.... chocolate

As I read the news about the chocolate Jesus, some irreverent words from these irreverent verses kept playing in my head:
I don't care if it rains or freezes
'Long as I got my plastic chocolate Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far. . . .
Git yourself a Sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell . . .
She don't slip and she don't slide
Cuz her butt is magnetized. . .
Guaranteeing I won't go to Hell . . .

So I agree with this post from olvizi at Echidene:

Can you believe that Matt Semler, the now former director of the Lab Gallery didn’t know exactly what would result from the aborted “My Sweet Lord” exhibit? That’s the one with the big chocolate Jesus on the cross - without loincloth - just to gild the lily. It was announced for New York City, the home base of America’s most reliable rent-a-reactionary, Bill Donohue. Certainly someone in Semler’s profession had noticed his performance art on at least one occasion, including his “Sensations” reaction. He's the Christo of "christianity". So, I’ve got very little sympathy for Semler's resignation even as I wearily roll my eyes and say “Yes, yes. Of course it is a matter of free speech”, to which a polite person wouldn’t add, no matter how juvenile the message was.
The work of “art” is apparently one of a number of rather silly sounding pieces by Cosimo Cavallario. His previous production includes large installations featuring 5 tons of pepper jack sprayed on a Wyoming house and a four poster bed made of ham, sounds more hors’ d’oeuvre than oeuvre. . . . I haven’t read anywhere but the edible aspect of the chocolate would invite the suspicion that it was an Easter season satire on Catholic communion. If that didn’t occur to the artiste, he’s just one dumb bunny.

In the traditional Canadian Easter, the chocolate bunny ears are always eaten first.

There's no crying in baseball

People will come

I read the news today, oh boy

Iran reasons: Boris at Galloping Beaver gives two excellent reasons why Iran has taken those British sailors hostage: Iran wants to undermine the US/UK alliance and it needs human shields.

Plastics

I want to say one word to you. Just one word.
Yes, sir.
Are you listening?
Yes, I am.
Plastics.

No wonder he jumped into the pool -- its everywhere. They think the pet food contamination is melamine, and now they're even recalling a dry cat food brand as a precaution. And they just found chunks of plastic in some Caramel Kit Kat Chunky chocolate bars.

Bush-onset alzheimer's The Bush administration had better be keeping excellent records -- their top-level appointees and staff just can't ever seem to remember anything.

ROTFLMAO...

The head of a California company hired by the U.S. government to help build a fence along the Southwest border to curb the flow of illegal aliens into the United States has been sentenced on charges of hiring illegals for the job.

Is there any way to comment on this without laughing? You can't make these things up.

There must be a God, after all. The controversial right-wing anti-birth control zealot who was appointed by the Bush administration to head up the government family planning office has had to resign because he was charged with some kind of Medicade fraud. You can't make these things up.

And here's a post the world has been waiting for. Over at Steve Gilliard's blog, guest poster Jesse Doc Wendel has an article about how to win at Rock, Paper, Scissors, thus going to show that you CAN make these things up.
When in doubt, go paper.

Gonna wash that man right outta my hair

First, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah cancelled a US state dinner in his honour with just two weeks notice, something about having to wash his hair that night.
Now he has given the opening speech to the Arab Riyadh Summit in which he describes the US occupation of Iraq as an illegitimate foreign occupation:

King Abdullah denounced the American military presence in Iraq on Wednesday as an "illegitimate foreign occupation" and called on the West to end its financial embargo against the Palestinians.
The Saudi monarch's speech was a strongly worded lecture to Arab leaders that their divisions had helped fuel turmoil across the Middle East, and he urged them to show unity. But in opening the Arab summit, Abdullah also nodded to hardliners by criticizing the U.S. presence in Iraq.
"In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war," said the king . . . Abdullah insisted that only when Arab leaders unite will they be able to prevent "foreign powers from drawing the region's future."
"The real blame should be directed at us, the leaders of the Arab nation," he said. "Our constant disagreements and rejection of unity have made the Arab nation lose confidence in our sincerity and lose hope."

The US response is just the usual weak lie:

"The United States is in Iraq at the request of the Iraqis and under a United Nations mandate. Any suggestion to the contrary is wrong," said National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe.

Oh, who do they think they're kidding -- we all know that the Iraqi who "requested" the invasion was Chalabi, and we all know the US and Britain didn't dare ask for a Security Council "mandate" before the invasion; they only got a favourable vote after the fact because the UN membership hoped against hope that things would work out OK (and they were wrong. ) It isn't a response the Saudis will respect.
Oh, and Jordan's King Abdullah has also cancelled the state visit he had planned for September, something about having to wash his hair that night, I guess.
Bush is circling the drain now.

Great line of the day

From greenboy at Needlenose:

Bono was playing a U2 concert in Glasgow recently, when he asked the audience for total quiet.
Then in the silence, he started to slowly clap his hands, once every few seconds.
Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone, "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies."
A Glaswegian voice rang out from near the front of the crowd, piercing the silence........
"Well, fuckin' stop doing it then!"

Soooeeee!

The more I read about Bush White House shenanigans, the more I think it resembles Pigs in Space.
The beltway media -- who couldn't be bothered themselves to investigate any of this stuff over the last five years -- are now frantically trying to con the Democrats into thinking that the public doesn't really want to know all these sordid details. But the stories of bribery, corruption, yachts, spurious contracts, limos, hookergate, and wise guys are bursting out all over -- with the icing on the cake being that Abu Gonzales fired the US attorneys, like Carol Lam, who were starting to uncover all this.
It's rapidly becoming another grime-encrusted tale of Republican corruption -- just like Nixon and his plumbers, like Reagan and his Iran-Contra-BCCI scandals, it appears that Bush and Cheney and their gang of idiots just couldn't restrain themselves -- all that lovely federal money just sitting there waiting for them to wallow in it, throw it around, spend it, to enrich all their good buddies and dearest pals.
I mean, it's not as though government actually does anything important with all that money anyway, so the boys might as well put it to good use, eh?
So just belly up to the bar -- pigs, meet the trough.
But luckily, they have been just as compentent about raiding the public purse as they have been with everything else they've done. Presumably believing Karl Rove's assurances that the Republicans would have a permanent majority, they pandered to their base by hiring ideological light-weights from Pat Robertson's Regent University.
So it's all falling apart now.

Quebec election

In the great movie The Wind and the Lion, one of the best lines is when Brian Keith playing Teddy Roosevelt says "I go to Oyster Bay for the weekend and the government of Morocco falls."
Well, I feel a little like that tonight -- I go to Kamloops for the last two days, and the government of Quebec falls (or sort of falls, anyway).
Jason Cherniak provides the following analysis of the confusing conservatives-helping-liberals aspects of Quebec politics:

During the last federal election, Québec Liberals helped the federal Conservatives outside of Montreal. This was at Charest's behest and he was able to convince provincial Liberals because the federal Liberal cause seemed hopeless in many parts of the province. Federal Conservative Jean Charest seemed to have played his cards right. He and Harper would work together to end the separatist threat, then the PLQ could help Harper everywhere in the province.
Then came the ADQ. Oops. Who would have thought that the election of a federal Conservative government would help the provincial conservative party? Like any other political party, members of the Québec Liberals want to win. While they did win, it was by a whisker. I don't think they will be in much of a mood to help Harper after seeing how his success helped the ADQ.
I think it has become very clear that if politics is to become a true left-right argument in Québec, then the provincial and federal Liberals need to work together. Otherwise, both Liberal parties will fail in the province. Federal Tories like Charest may be around for a while yet, but they cannot be the future of the Québec Liberals. The only question in my mind is whether Québec Liberals will figure that out before the next federal election. They might not, but in the longer run I am fairly sure they will. I am also fairly sure that if federal politics becomes a debate of ideas, then the Liberals will win in Québec.

Away

Sorry for the lack of posts -- I've been away since Sunday and not back until tomorrow, so I haven't had much chance to blog. More on Wednesday.

Scary

Not scary