Great line of the day

Josh Marshall talks about political "orthodoxy":

In our society, at least in most of it, the word 'orthodoxy' comes with at least a loose negative connotation. We're open-minded, tolerant people. So to call one of a political party's bedrock issues an 'orthodoxy', as the Times does here, is at least to slightly prejudice the question . . . But why do Republicans need to give up these 'orthodoxies'...Why shouldn't they organize their voting around these issues that mean so much to them?
It reminds of the predictable-as-the-seasons articles you'll read every few years in the Post and other papers asking whether Democrats are going to give up their hidebound orthodoxies of supporting Social Security or the progressive income tax or civil rights. For many of us those are precisely the reasons we're involved in politics, so why should we give them up because some frivolous oped writer who doesn't know the first thing about public policy thinks it's the hip new thing to do?
How many Democrats would support a flat-tax, pro-privatization, anti-gay rights candidate for president? And why should they? Washington's beautiful people, the froth at the top of the politico-cultural mug, look down on everybody, right and left, who's really committed politically. It's a mild embarrassment, like loud clothes or poor table manners.

Emphasis mine.
And I think this is why so much political coverage from both Washington and Ottawa is just "horse-race" coverage or got-ya gonzo journalism -- because too many of our national reporters on both sides of the border are just too, too sophisticated (and too, too rich) to really care about any of the social or economic issues the candidates are talking about.
They act like nobody else should care either. So gauche!

Call Me Al

Comments aren't working, apparently. So just enjoy:

Household hints

In honour of Mother's Day, The Onion is running a special issue just for us girls -- including some very useful household hints:

* You may find yourself lying in bed at night beside your husband thinking, "Is this all?" It isn't, sister. With a cup of corn starch in your sheet laundry, you can achieve those perfect hospital corners.
* The only way for a woman to know herself as a person is through creative work of her own. Cut grilled cheese sandwichces diagonally and let your spirit soar!
* Power that pan clean with Girl Power! The same goes for counters, collars, rugs, curtains, tile, grout, duvet covers, venetian blinds, and problem areas.
* When you open yourself to the abundance of the universe, anything is possible... even getting a clean toilet with NO SCRUBBING! Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet, let it sit for one hour, and then flush it clean. You can use that extra sixty minutes of free time to believe, breathe, dream, laugh, or CELEBRATE what makes you UNIQUE!
* Do you often find yourself wishing there were more hours in the day? Juggling a career, a home, and a relationship can be hard, but you can't let any one of those things go, or you will be a failure as a woman. Taking a regular dose of methamphetamine will give you the energy to successfully manage all three and spare you the inconvenience of sleep.
* Liberate yourself from household chores: Have children!

Document dump?

Wow -- Cheney is threatening Iran again AND there's a big announcement about a terrorist threat in Germany.
Must be some really bad news for the Bush administration coming out this afternoon.
UPDATE: Here is the bad news. Or maybe it's this embarrassment.

Great line of the day

Josh Marshall writes about the real question raised by many of the recent "terrorism cult" arrests in the United States:- like these guys, and now these guys:

. ..the real jokers they actually bust turn out to be such hopeless goofs that it's hard to know whether ... if Islamic terrorism is catching on in the US, that it's only doing so among the deeply stupid, or that these are the only ones our guys can catch.

Cab-driver Journalism

Some interesting posts today about the conceit of rich, white, old political journalists who think they are "men of the people".
Glenn Greenwald writes:

Claims that one's own views are what 'Americans think,' when unaccompanied by empirical data, are worthless. And patronizingly joining the 'real people' in a coffee shop a few times a year is meaningless. It certainly does not make one qualified to speak on behalf of anyone.

Digby follows up:

[These journalists have] a sort of pre-conceived notion of what defines "the people" that appears to have been formed by TV sit-coms in 1955 . . . invariably these middle-aged white men say the country is going to hell in a handbasket and they want the government to do more and they hate paying taxes . . . Meanwhile, someone like me, who lives in a big city on the west coast and who doesn't hang out in diners with middle aged white men are used as an example of the "fringe" even though I too am one of "the people" as are many others --- like hispanic youths or single urban mothers or dot-com millionaires or elderly southern black granddads or Korean entrepreneurs

What Greenwald and Digby are describing is what I call "cab-driver journalism" and it works like this:
a reporter from Washington or Toronto flies into Podunk, Nebraska or Riverwart, Alberta or even a city like Los Angeles or Halifax to cover something -- maybe a political convention or a space launch or a missing white woman or a big storm or a trial or whatever.
And the first thing he does is hop into a cab to get to his hotel from the airport.
And on the way into town, usually a half-hour trip or more, he invariably asks the cab driver what he thinks about the convention/space launch/missing woman/storm/trial/whatever. And so the cab driver tells him.
And chances are, this will be the ONLY actual citizen the reporter ever talks to -- unless he hops another cab to go somewhere else -- because everyone else he meets, from the desk clerk to the waitress to the doorman to the office secretary, is busy working and they don't have time.
So then the reporter writes a sidebar story, beginning something like "People in Podunk are getting tired of ______ already and ____ hasn't even started yet. They're wondering why the government would spend a dime on _____"
And then when the reporter goes home, he spends the next several months telling his co-workers things like "When I was in Podunk, people were saying.....", to the point that he eventually believes he really did talk to a lot of people there.
Personally, just about everything I know about Nashville, and Seattle, and Detroit, and Boulder, and Boston, and London, Ontario, and Fredrickton, and Toronto, I learned from cab drivers.
In retrospect, though some of the rides certainly were interesting, and the stories I heard certainly amusing, I doubt that I have a particularly broad or well- informed view of those cities or what their people think.
So next time some pundit starts writing about what the people of your town "really think", don't be surprised if it sounds just like the yap you heard during your last cab ride.

Great line of the day

Alison at Creekside gives the Globe and Mail a rap on the knuckles for daring to use the term "prisoners" to describe Afghan prisoners. She asks how long will Canada put up with this?

I thought we settled this already.
The Afghan people are "insurgents" until such time as they are killed or handed over to Afghan authorities to be tortured, at which point they become "scumbags", terrorists, and Taliban.
How many times do we have to go over this?

Chow down

Maybe we should all be putting in our own big gardens this spring. And finding a local farmer to sell us a beef quarter from an animal he raised himself.
Here's a chilling summary of the melamine contamination issue, titled FDA: the “Faith-based Dining Administration”:

. . . USDA/FDA say they believe the melamine level in meat would be very low, but they haven’t bothered to test it. They say they believe melamine is nontoxic to humans, but then, a few months ago we believed it was nontoxic to dogs and cats too. They say they believe that there have been no human health problems due to eating tainted pork and chicken, but admit that the Centers for Disease Control has “limited ability to detect subtle problems due to melamine and melamine-related compounds.”
And while USDA/FDA have focused their efforts almost entirely on inspecting imports of vegetable protein concentrates, and on tracking contaminated product through the animal and human food supply, the import of processed foods, meat and farmed seafood products from China has continued unchecked and unabated, despite the obvious potential of contamination within China’s own, largely unregulated, agriculture and food industries.

I don't think we've heard the last of this one.

Crazy line of the day

From a crazy pundit called Dick Morris:

. . . if we stay in Iraq, it gives them the opportunity to kill more Americans, which they really like.
One of the things, though, that I think the antiwar crowd has not considered is that, if we’re putting the Americans right within their arms’ reach, they don’t have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans. They don’t have to knock down the trade center. They can do it around the corner, and convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.

So now we finally know why American soldiers are in Iraq -- to be targets.

Iraq's poster child

Here's one of the saddest stories you will ever read:

The tiny photo shop is an open shutter onto Iraq's woes, and Farouq has reluctantly plunged into a somber new specialty. "Almost all my work now is focused on martyrs," he said . . .
He used to dote over each picture, sharpening contrast, adjusting light and finding the perfect tint for green grasses and blue skies. Now he's fixing the reds in a pool of blood. . . the only steady business that doesn't involve death and destruction is the booming demand for passport photos.

Some Republican was talking tonight on MSNBC about how, if things aren't better by September, then Bush will just have to develop a new policy.
What a joke! He won't do that -- Cheney won't let him.
And even if Bush wanted to, he can't do it--he doesn't know how. He'll just continue to sit there, reading My Pet Goat while children die.
The little girl pictured above was killed by a car bomb with her parents.

Great line of the day

From Tristero at Hullabaloo:

It blows my mind to think 28 percent of this country still thinks God's Joke From Texas is doing a fine job. Ok, ok, I know it's not entirely scientifically kosher, but that sort of means you go walking down a street - or go to a mall - and more than 1 out of every 4 people you pass is completely insane.

The Queen

Annie Leibovitz's new portrait of the queen.

The "R" Word

Anyone who remembers Paul Henderson's goal would once have been surprised by this photo.
In the Canada of the 1970s, and before, nobody ever saw turbaned Sikhs in Canadian police uniforms.
You didn't see very many women, either, of course.
But it is the Sikh officers I noticed in this photo -- because in reading the latest news from the Air India inquiry, I'm wondering if anyone is mentioning the "R" word there.
Can I mention it here? The "R" word is Racism.
Now, I haven't undertaken any kind of detailed research into the ins and outs of the trials or the recent news from the inquiry now going on. But I lived through those times. I remember. And I believe to this day that racism in BC and in Canada against Sikhs, and Asians generally, was a factor, perhaps a significant factor, in the failure of the Air India investigation.
Over the years, many things have been blamed for the chaotic, unfocused nature of this whole investigation, from the initial failure to take the warnings seriously, to the antiquated personnel policies of RCMP and Vancouver police which limited recruitment of non-white officers, to inter-service rivalries between the RCMP and CSIS which apparently led to mishanding of evidence and the inability of prosecutors to bring anyone to justice.
But underneath it all is a racist taint. The lives of the victims were devalued because they were of East Indian heritage. As a result, irrelevancies and distractions like inter-service rivalries and office politics were allowed to dominate and ultimately derail the investigation.
Here's one example of this devaluation which I still remember vividly:
The explosion happened June 23, 1985, one of the worst disasters in Canadian history. Macleans magazine didn't even stop the presses and pull their cover story. They just put a banner across the top right corner. I have never forgotten my shock when I saw that cover -- a major Canadian disaster, and our major news magazine doesn't even make it their cover story? It was as though it was just another disaster in a foreign country, rather than a disaster for citizens of Canada.
Here is testimony from Toronto engineer Bal Gupta to the inquiry in September, describing what the Air India disaster did to Canadian families:

... 329 persons were murdered, most of them Canadians. Twenty-nine families were completely wiped out, 32 families had one spouse left alone. Eight couples lost all their children, and two children lost both parents...

Yet Prime Minister Mulroney did not call the families. Gupta testified:

"The Government of Canada did not set up any information line and did not offer any other administrative or emotional help immediately or any time thereafter. Instead we heard that Prime Minister Brian Mulroney sent condolences to Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi."

Here are some of the historic events from that time in Sikh-Canadian history -- and all of them happened in the decade AFTER the Air India disaster:

1986
Metro Toronto Police permitted Sikhs to wear their turbans while on duty with the force.
1986
First Sikh elected to any provincial legislature in Canada was Manmohan (Moe) Sahota from Esquimalt, British Colombia.
1988
March 10, the Canadian Parliament devoted a whole day to debate the issue of the Sikh's rights and the issue of Khalistan.
1988
Dr. Gulzar Singh Cheema was elected as an M.L.A. to the Manitoba legislature.
1990
A plaque commemorating the Komagala Maru Incident was placed at Portal Park in Vancouver on May 23 jointly by the municipal, provincial, and federal Governments.
1990
March 15, the solicitor General of Canada announced that the RCMP dress code would be amended to have a turbaned Sikh join the force. Constable Baltej Singh Dhillon had the honour of becoming the first baptized Sikh to join the RCMP.
1991
Three Sikhs were elected to the British Columbia legislature. Manmohan (Moe) Sihota, and Ujjal Dosanjh have held various cabinet posts, and the other M.L.A. is Harbhajan (Harry) Lalli.
1993
Gurbax Singh Mahli and Harbans (Herb) Dhaliwal were the first Sikhs elected to the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa.
1993
In July, Vancouver Punjabi Market at Main and 49th Street was officially recognized with bilingual signs in English and Punjabi.
1993
Five Sikh veterans were invited to participate in a Remembrance Day parade on November 11, but were denied entry to the Royal Canadian Legion in Newton, B.C.
1995
The B.C. Government officially recognized the Vaisakhi Parade and published a brochure.
1996
February 15, the Supreme Court of Canada reaffirmed a Sikh officers right to wear a turban.

I remember that stupid turban battle which went on and on and on, embittering so many people and setting Canadians against each other. And I remember that ridiculous flap about wearing a turban into a Royal Canadian Legion, as if East Indian veterans weren't quite "good enough" to associate with the "real" Canadians.
I hope we are living in a better Canada today. In 2005, then-prime minister Paul Martin declared June 23, 2005, as a national day of mourning and said June 23 would be Canada's National Day of Remembrance for Victims of Terrorism.
Ujjal Dosanjh was quoted in Macleans just yesterday:

Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh says he's shocked but not surprised that police did not take seriously warnings that Sikh extremists planned to blow up an Air India jetliner two decades ago.
In the months preceding the 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182, Dosanjh said it was clear that police didn't understand or care about tensions within British Columbia's Indo-Canadian community.
"There was at that time a basic perception (that) here are some brown guys with turbans fighting each other, maybe hurting each other," Dosanjh said Thursday.
"The rest of the society really didn't know the culture, didn't know the language, didn't really know the issues, didn't in fact care very much. And that permeated throughout the (police) forces . . . I'm not blaming them but that was the environment at that time." . . .
"Maybe it's harsh coming from me at this day and age but I genuinely believe if you had 329 white Anglo-Saxons killed in an Air India disaster, you would have had an inquiry in no time."
Dosanjh had been relatively circumspect in his comments about Air India until now. But evidence coming out of the Air India inquiry about ignored warnings and investigative foul-ups prompted him to bluntly suggest that racism was part of the problem.
"I've never spoken so harshly before but that's the truth and Canadians have to, we have to confront that truth," he said.
"The fact is racism lurks in various nooks and crannies of this society. All of us have dark corners in our hearts. We have biases and prejudices that we live with. We have to all kind of come clean and deal with these issues."

Great line of the day

Timothy Gatto on The Smirking Chimp writes about a McCain comment during the Republican Debate:

John McCain had to qualify that vote for evolution by saying that when he walks through the Grand Canyon, he see’s God’s hand over the horizon. He doesn’t know it, but that’s God waving goodbye to any chance of him becoming the Republican candidate.

Embryo "farming"?

I'm listening to the Republican debate on TV in the background and somebody just said they don't support embryo farming.
Whew! That's a relief. We won't need a new marketing board, I guess.