Great line of the day

Scott Tribe updates us on the Conservative accountability reforms:

. . . this was another dog and pony show designed to try and curry favour with voters from Deceivin’ Stephen’s bunch by giving the impression of doing something to clean up politics in order to get that vaunted majority. In truth, the Conservatives have discovered they like appointing their friends and partisans as much as anyone else, and have made sure so far they aren’t hampered from doing it.

Emphasis mine.
Now personally, I never did think this election promise about making political appointments on merit rather than on party affiliation would ever actually be enacted.
An existing government that wins reelection might be able to get away with making some "bipartisan" appointments, but when a new party takes power, there is a pent-up demand from hundreds of their nearest and dearest friends and partisans for all those plumb government appointments, and no political leader can afford to just ignore their own supporters. Putting it politely, one could say that of course a government is going to appoint people who already have demonstrated they support the new government's goals.
Putting it crassly, a politician has to dance with the one who brung him.
But Scott is exactly right that voters wanted a different approach. They actually thought they might get it with Harper.
Fool me once...

Go crazy? Don't mind if I do

So now they're saying that smoking pot increases the risk of mental illness -- what, are they nuts?

Chicken Little-In-Chief

So the Bush administration has been ignoring the US wiretapping laws for the last six years.
They have been wiretapping illegally -- because, I think, no judge would have given them a warrant for the data-mining approach they were likely using, nor would any judge have approved listening in on journalists and Democrats and foreign diplomats, all of whom have been labelled by the Bush administration as terrorist sympathizers and fellow travellers, and if you think that label was just for show, well, what planet have you been living on?
But Bush and Cheney couldn't be bothered changing the US law, even though a compliant Republican Congress would have approved anything they wanted.
Now, its been a pretty bad July so far for the Bush administration -- the Abu Gonzales mess, the immigration bill collapse, the vote coming up to restore habeus corpus to the Guantanamo prisoners, and now the Tillman fragging.
So they're trying one more time to play the "terrorism" card -- once more into the breach, dear friends, once more.
Bush will announce in his Saturday radio address that he wants Congress to revise the surveillance legislation right away, immediately, right now. After six years of no action, its just so urgent now that Congress does what Bush wants in the next six days.
I think Bush and Cheney are trying once again to distract Congress and the media with something new and shiny, in the hopes that everyone will start talking about how important it is that the surveillance law be changed and that the Democrats are traitors if they don't go along.
But I don't think President 27 Per Cent can pull this off now. Not anymore.
So the sky is falling? Again? Yawn...

Teh Gay

In Canada, there have been more than 12,000 gay marriages since 2003. Apparently the country is going to fall apart any day now. Did you know that gay marriage means we have to support separatism in Quebec? Yep, just like the wingnuts have been telling us all along, gay marriage = the end of Canada. It says so in a book.
And here's more -- It's all because (The Gays Are Getting Married):

That popping sound you hear is the bubble bursting

French banker Jerome Guillet at Daily Kos describes the slow motion economic train wreck which is occurring in the US financial markets now. He concludes:

As the bubble unwinds (or pops), it is essential to make it clear that it should not be workers, or taxpayers, that end up paying for the recklessness of the financiers, and that those that gorged on the good times should bear the pain of the new, leaner times . . . The focus on financial profits over industrial ones, unable to provide the same instant returns, has skewed the economy ever more towards financial services rather than other "real" activities (except the finance fuelled construction sector). That may not prove to have been the most sustainable policy.
Altogether, the politics of individual greed over those of a collective future need to be blamed.

Ninjas!

Alison sends us to the Lolcat Bible, which was originally posted on Scarlet Words where I also found the Algorithm March, and this version is with Ninjas:



Don't ya just love the Internets!

The lone and level sands stretch far away

Check out the videos at this site -- The World Without Us - Alan Weisman. It's sort of chilling, in the "My name is Ozymandias" sense.

Are we there yet?

No, not yet.
I think bloggers need to stop talking about impeaching Bush and Cheney and start talking about what exactly they have done wrong.
Half of the population of the United States did not vote for Bush and Cheney in either 2000 or 2004. Some statistics would appear to indicate that a quarter or more of Americans would now support impeachment.
But there will be no groundswell of support until a majority of people can see what illegalities have been committed. So far, its still sort of vague -- did they violate the FISA Act with the NSA wiretapping program? Did they violate the Geneva Conventions when they approved torture and rendition? Did they deliberately lie to start the war with Iraq?
But Bush and Cheney did it all with the cover of Executive Orders, they got some tame lawyer (AKA the Attorney General) to provide supporting opinions, and they even got some degree of Congressional support, back when Congress was majority Republican.
So the "high crimes and misdemeanors" still need to be identified and defined.
Nixon tried to cover up a crime (the Watergate break-in). Clinton lied under oath. In both cases, these were individual actions; they were done by the President without any legalistic "cover"; and they were done for a personal benefit -- neither Nixon nor Clinton could claim they did what they did to protect the nation. Also, it was pretty easy for the average person to understand what could be called "criminal" about these actions.
With Bush and Cheney, while their stupidity and incompetence and cowardice certainly disgust many Americans, this may not be sufficient to make a clear majority support impeachment. The specifics of the case have to be spelled out.

Stunts

This sounds like a stunt to me.
If the issue of allowing human rights complaints against band councils has been a problem since 1977, why the sudden rush to recall MPs to deal with it right now, over the summer?
Oh, yes, I forgot -- fall election coming up...

Great line of the day

Over at Canadian Cynic, pretty shaved ape expresses some shrill cynicism (quel suprise!) about our defense minister's recent Declare-Victory-And-Leave announcement:

"O'Connor was responding to new poll numbers that suggest support within Canada for the deployment is dropping while opposition is rising . . . During an appearance on CTV's Question Period that aired Sunday, O'Connor said those numbers are largely due to Canadians' lack of clear understanding of Canada's successes in Afghanistan, as well as the challenges faced there."

After half a freaking decade of action, as the mission steadily deteriorates and the liberation slowly decays into ineffectual occupation, as the will and patience of both the Afghan and Canadian populations erode, we just don't understand that our troops have Tim Horton's coffee. And according to big Steve our military just keeps getting better and better with every flag at half mast. Shame that Gordon O'Lobby can't seem to present a clearly understandable picture of our "success". So buck up anyway, whiners.

Hey, does anybody else smell a fall election being plotted?

Is everybody happy NOW?

Huffington Post reports on an interview with US National Intelligence Director Mitch McConnell talking about the CIA's interrogation techniques and the President's executive order:

The executive order bans torture, cruel and inhumane treatment, sexual abuse, acts intended to denigrate a religion or other degradation "beyond the bounds of human decency." It pledges that detainees will receive adequate food, water and medical care and be protected from extreme heat and cold.
It does not, however, say what techniques are permitted during harsh questioning of suspects . . .
When asked if the permissible techniques would be troubling to the American people if the enemy used them against a U.S. citizen, McConnell said: "I would not want a U.S. citizen to go through the process. But it is not torture, and there would be no permanent damage to that citizen."
Bush's order is intended in part to quell international criticism of some of the CIA's most debated work.

Yeah, I'm sure that'll do it alright.
The international community will be just so supportive of interrogation techniques which are too brutal to be used on US citizens. At least no one is losing an eye anymore, I guess.
Or maybe we're only supposed to THINK that the US is torturing people, but really they're not:

The order specifically refers to captured al-Qaida suspects who may have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders.
"Because they believe these techniques might involve torture and they don't understand them, they tend to speak to us ... in a very candid way," McConnell said.

I guess someone waving a soldering iron in your face could be one of those 'misunderstood techniques'.
Maybe Jack Bauer should try that.

My favorite commercial

See here for more info.

Saturday Night still lives

You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon and Chevy Chase

Good, better, best

Good

Mike Luckovich

Better

Jack Ohman

Best

Mike Luckovich

Great line of the day

From Ken Levin, writing about the 2007 Emmy nominations:

THE SOPRANOS was nominated for everything including best cartoon. Here’s what I hope happens. David Chase wins, goes up to the podium, starts to speak, and the screen just goes black.